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TWELVE 



DISCOURSES. 



BY 



HENRY MARTYN DEXTER 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED FOR SALE AT THE LADIES' FAIR FOR THE FURNISHING 

OF THE NEW PINE STREET MEETING-HOUSE. 

NOVEMBER, IHOO. 



Eutered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

HENRY M. DEXTER, 

[a th^ Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



In Exchange 



Brown University 
MAR 1 2 1935 



Printed by 

OliO. O. RAND A AVEIiY, 3 CORXIULL, BOSTOIT. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



These discourses have been printed, not because 
of any presumed special demand upon public atten- 
tion in their character, but because it was thought 
that their issue in this form might add something to 
the net profits of an effort upon which reliance is 
had for the full completion of a long struggling, but 
now nearly successful enterprise. Their selection luis 
been determined by various personal wishes and con- 
siderations, which need not be mentioned here. Tliat 
the blessing of God may rest upon every reader is 
their Author's prayer. 

Hillside, Koxbury, October 23, 1860. 



CONTENTS. 



I. There is a God 

II. The whole Bible, or none . . 

III. Repentance alone insufficient . 

IV. The way of Salvation . . . 
V. The Conversion of the Ethiop 

VI. The Conversion of Zaccheus . 

V'll. The Conversion of Lydia . . 

VIII. Good Intentions 

IX. Good and Faithful Service . . 

X. Faith the Measure of Success . 

XL Christ and the Common People 

XII. The Lord the Builder . . . 



PAGE 

1 



72 
92 
102 
11-1 
129 
142 
IBf) 
180 
205 



(tii) 



I. 

THERE IS A GOD* 



HEBKEWS III: 4. 

EVERY HOUSE 18 BUILDED BY SOME MAX ; BUT HE THAT BUILT 
ALL THINGS IS GOD. 

Lord Bacox says, " God never wrought miracles to 
convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince 
it." I believe this to be true, and I have felt that it 
might strengthen our convictions of the Divine exist- 
ence, and of the duties which it involves, if we were 
to consider more in detail than it has been usual for 
writers, or preachers, to do, that argument for God 
which is found in the common facts and daily expe- 
riences of ordinary life. 

Bear in mind that the question is not whether we can 
establish the being of a God by evidence which nobody 
can possibly object to, but whether we can do it by 
evidence against which no valid objection can be 
brought. An ingenious man can suggest objections to 
any thing ; and therefore an objection proves nothing 
until it is found to overmaster opposing considerations. 



* Preached in the Pine Street Church, Boston, (Sabbath Evening,) 
November 18th, 1855. 

1 (1) 



2 SERMONS. 

Xor, is the question whether we can demonstrate a Su- 
preme Being with absolute certainty ; for nothing can be 
demonstrated with such absolute certainty that it shall 
not be possible for the fertile mind to imagine some 
opposite possibility. But the question is. Is there such 
and so much evidence of the being of God, as to 
amount to an efficient certainty : such a certainty as we 
are accustomed to demand and rely upon in all the 
common acts of life ; such as it would be folly and mad- 
ness to resist ? 

Thus clearly comprehending the point to be proved, 
let us glance a moment at the nature of the argTiment 
on which it will be natural and necessary for us to de- 
pond in its demonstration. We must rely, in the first 
place, upon the five senses to put us in possession of 
the facts upon which our proposition will rest. We 
must rely, in the second place, upon testimony to en- 
large our own personal cognizance of such facts, by the 
added experience of others. We must rely, in the 
third place, upon common sense to supply such princi- 
ples as may be necessary to link those facts together. 
And, in the last place, we must rely upon reasoning to 
frame those facts and principles into a bridge of argu- 
ment, which will carry us securely and strongly over 
from the known result to the unknown cause. 

The two main prhiciples, from the domain of common 
sense, on which it is needful to rely, in such an argu- 
ment, are, that every eftect must have a cause, and that 
every cause implies the presence of mind. So vital 
are these to the result, that I shall pause a moment to 
develop more fully their nature and reliability, before 
proceeding further. 



THEREISAGOD. 3 

I wish to move my hand to my head. It moves as I 
would have it. Xow in this I am conscious of an act 
of will, and I am also conscious of a bodily motion fol- 
lowing that act of will ; and my common sense tells me 
that the volition was the cause of the motion. I jDlunge 
a bar of cold iron into the white heat of a forge ; it soon 
reddens, and glows, and softens. My common sense 
tells me that the fire is the cause of the heat of the 
bar. I get upon a locomotive which is standing, with 
steam up, upon the rails. I open the valve which ad- 
mits that steam to the cylinders, and the machinery 
starts, and the engine rushes along the track. My com- 
mon sense tells me that my act was the cause of that 
motion. I visit Donald McKay's ship-yard at East Bos- 
ton. I find the " Great Republic " on the stocks just 
ready to be launched. I know that she was not always 
there. I know that she did not grow there, as the corn 
grows in the field. I know that she was put together 
there, piece by piece, by ship-carpenters and others. I 
know that Donald McKay showed those workmen how 
to place each stick, and that it was the model which he 
fashioned which made her a sharp clipper ship, and not 
a broad-bottomed barge. My common sense tells me 
that Donald McKay's skill, is the cause of that huge 
vessel. 

Thus, I invariably come back from all such observa- 
tions to the original suggestion which my common 
sense impresses upon my mind concerning them, that 
there is a law of cause and effect : so that when I see 
any thing effected, I cannot help inferring that it had a 
cause. I pick up a little cog-wheel upon a surf-beach. 
I at once feel that it did not grow there in that form, — 



4 SERMONS. 

that it had a cause other than the waves and the sand. 
I know that man made it, and made it for some use ; 
tliat, in his thought, it had place in some machine. I 
pick up a round pebble that was lying by its side. I at 
once feel concerning that, also, that it did not receive 
its sliape and character from that spot. I attribute its 
roundness to the attrition of the waves, which, for cen- 
turies, perliaps, have been grinding it upon their grav- 
elly bed. Now, in these judgments, I am perfectly rea- 
sonable. I strain no point. I follow the natural and 
necessary processes of my mind. If I cannot rightly 
infer that order, organization, effect, imply, by an abso- 
lute necessity, a cause, — and that every cause ener- 
gized, will result in an effect, then I cannot reason at 
all — nay, I cannot utter another sound, for as I am 
speaking to you now, I am proceeding upon the suppo- 
sition that the action of my will, as a cause, upon cer- 
tain muscles which I am using about the lungs and 
throat, will produce certain sounds, as an immediate 
effect, and that those sounds will carry over certain 
ideas to you, and awaken certain convictions in you, as 
an ultimate effect. 

Equally imperative is the original suggestion of my 
common sense, that every cause implies the action of 
mind. You find it impossible to believe that the cog- 
wheel is not the result of contrivance ; fixing the num- 
ber and size of the teeth, and shaping Wie whole for its 
place with other wheels. If a man tells you you do not 
know this, ])ecause you cannot prove it, you naturally 
rejjly ; It needs not that I prove how it came on this 
beach, and what man made it, since my common sense 
obliges me to believe that some man made it, and made 



THERE IS A GOD. 5 

it because some mind contriTed it. And with regard 
to those causes which take place under what we call 
the laws of nature, and which, at first glanpe, do not 
so immediately suggest and demand mind as insei> 
arable from them, we reason thus. True, I might 
perhaps, conceive of one pebble, as being rounded by 
the action of the waves, accidentally, and as the result 
of no plan, but when I observe that millions of pebbles 
are, in the same way, rounded by the action of the 
waves, I cannot help inferring that there is some reason 
why the rolling of the surf upon the shore should always 
tend to make pebbles smooth and round ; nay, that there 
must be some reason why the surf rolls upon the shore ; 
and thus I am carried back until I reach a plan ; and 
that plan compels me to the conviction of some mind 
planning ; and so, wherever I find an effect, I am driven 
to infer a cause ; and wherever I find a cause, I am 
driven to infer a causing mind. So universal and abso- 
lute is the working of these convictions in the human 
soul, that even the skeptic who tries to deny them, can- 
not help acting upon them. Stand behind him while 
his mouth is open with an argument against them, and 
touch his shoulder with your finger, and see if he does 
not turn to find who touched him ; to ask what is 
wanted. He cannot hel^D inferring that some person 
was the cause of the finger-pressure which he felt, and 
that that person had a cause for his act. 

These preliminaries being settled, and the way clear 
before us — knowing exactly what we have to prove, 
and by what process of argument the work may be logi- 
cally brought to a result of efficient certainty — we are 
ready to commence the demonstration. 

1* 



6 SERMONS. 

And, for the sake at once of grouping together our 
facts, for more easy remembrance, and of gaining practi- 
cal force for the argument, I propose to imagine a day 
in the ordinary life of a mechanic — say a machinist, — 
and as we follow him along its hours and labors, to 
develop such considerations in proof of the Divine exis- 
tence, as naturally suggest themselves in that connec- 
tion. 

I imagine him first as waking at dawn. As his eyes 
open, and he gains full consciousness, his first feeling is 
one of refreshment from slumber. He went to bed 
exhausted, with aching muscles, and a throbbing head, 
from his yesterday's over-exertion. He now feels fresh 
and vigorous ; his muscles are supple, his head clear. 
What is the cause of this grateful change ? Sleep. But 
what is sleep, and how comes sleep to refresh a tired 
man ? 

Sleep is the resting of the brain. Every voluntary 
motion of the body, and every thought of the mind is 
the result of an act of the brain, giving off nervous 
force to the nervous system. The consequence is, that 
a long day's work, with its innumerable mental acts, 
and bodily motions, exhausts the concentrated stock of 
nervous energy, and sensations of weariness and torpor 
follow. The eyes close, the muscles relax, those bodily 
movements, which depend upon volition, cease ; the 
l)rain has nothing to do, until morning, and rests — 
secreting a new stock of nervous energy for the uses of 
to-morrow. The process is somewhat analogous to that 
by which the little brook is sometimes made to turn the 
great water-wheel. A dam is thrown across its ravine, 
and, during the night, when the miller has no corn to 



THEREISAGOD. 7 

grind, the pond tills up. At morning it is fall, and all 
the day it wliiiis the millstones merrily, till it is all run 
out at night, and the mill sleeps to let it till up again. 

XoTV tliis matter of sleeping, and waking refreshed, 
taken in comiection with the fact that hours of day- 
hght, which invite to labor, and which are enough to 
exhaust the accumulated energy of the brain, and hours 
of darkness, which invite to sleep, and which are enough 
to recruit that stock of nervous energy again, are con- 
stantly succeeding each other, develops a law under 
which men live. It is an effect : just as clearly the 
contrivance of a mind, as the mill-pond and the mill. 
So that the mechanic, as he sleeps and wakes again, 
demonstrates the existence of a mind which arranged 
that process for him. and for all men. That mind we 
caU God. 

Our mechanic rises, and, perceiving that the morning 
gives promise of a day of greater heat than yesterday, 
lays aside the warm woolens in which he was then 
clad, and dresses himself in cooler linens. But how 
coDies it that woolen is warm, and linen cool ? The 
shortest and simplest answer is, that it is found, as a 
matter of fact, to be a law, that woolen is a slow con- 
ductor of heat, and linen a good conductor ; so that 
clothes made of woolen, retain and so augment the 
heat of the body, and clothes made of linen, conduct it 
quickly off, and so give rise to the sensation of coolness. 
If this were so in one case alone, it would be a pleasant 
fact, but when we find it to be always so, it develops 
another effect ; it announces itself as the result of mmd ; 
and that mind we call God. 

Our machinist sits down to his mornins: meal. He 



8 SERMONS. 

is hungiy, and he eats and drinks, and rises invigorated, 
and feeling now fully equal to the labors of the day. 
But what is hunger, and how came he to be hungry ; 
and what are eating and drinking, and how come they 
to satisfy hunger, and impart strength ? Hunger is 
that uneasiness of a healthy stomach when empty, which 
gives notice that it needs food ; just as some contriv- 
ances indicate when a steam boiler is out of water. 
Eating and drinking are mechanical processes which in- 
troduce the needed food into the stomach — as the 
engineer pumps a supply into the boiler when the water 
is scant, and throws coal in through the furnace door 
when the fire is low. 

Let us now inquire exactly whence comes the feeling 
of faintness in hunger, and how this process of introduc- 
ino' food into the stomach takes awav that feehno; of 
faintness, and imparts the feeling of strength ? 

During the twenty-four hours of each day, the body 
of a healthy man of average size, breathes at least three 
thousand gallons of air ; gives oflF, in the air exhaled, 
some three pounds of carbonic acid, and the same 
weight of water ; and throws off also several ounces of 
the waste particles of its own substance, and of undi- 
gested matter. Moreover, in order to keep up the ani- 
mal heat of the body to its natural temperature of about 
98°, it is necessary that there should be a constant com- 
bustion (without flame) going on within, by which the 
starch, sugar, and fat of the food, are — so to speak — 
burned into the carbonic acid and water which escape 
in the breath. Still further, in order to supply the 
constant waste which is caused to the body by the act 
of living — which uses it up, much as burning uses up 



THEREISAGOD. 9 

the oil in a lamp — it is necessary that a large quantity 
of fibrin, and albumen, be furnished by the blood to 
take the place of that which is withdrawn, and so to 
prevent emaciation and death. We have then a constant 
draft going on, in the simple performance of the ordinary 
functions of hfe, which takes out of the blood at every 
moment, and with every breath and bodily motion, 
certain quantities of fibrin, gluten, fat, and sugar, which 
are the essential elements that the body uses in its 
growth, and for its daily work : by which, on the one 
hand, by burning a part of them into carbonic acid and 
water, it maintains the bodily heat ; and, by which, on 
the other, it repairs its own daily decay, and energizes 
its own constant motions. To furnish this fibrin, glu- 
ten, fat, and sugar, from without, is, of course, a fre- 
quent necessity. Hunger and thirst notify us when the 
stock v/ithin is getting scant, and eating and drinking 
introduce the fresh supply. Our survey of this part of 
the animal economy would be incomplete, however, if 
we did not notice the manner in which the miscellane- 
ous food eaten, is converted into the exact materials re- 
quired for the manufacture of strength within. 

Our mechanic eats — we will suppose — a beef-steak 
for his breakfast. That beef-steak contains, in every 
100 parts, 78 parts of water and blood, 19 parts of 
fibrin, and 3 parts of fat. The wheat bread which he 
eats with it, contains 45 parts of water, 6 of gluten, 
1 of fat, and 48 of starch. The potato contains 8 parts 
of gluten, and 92 of starch and water. The coffee 
which he drinks with it, contains 12 parts of water, 
15J of sugar, 13 of gluten, 13 of fat, and the rest of 
woody fibre, etc. The milk contains 35 parts of gluten, 



10 SERMONS. 

or casein, 24 of fat, and 37 of starch and sugar. Thus 
it \yill be seen that the various articles which he eats, 
under different forms and combinations, all contain very 
nearly the same essential elements, and those the very 
elements which are needed to support life. But how 
are these elements to be separated and applied inter- 
nally to the uses of the body ? 

In the first place, by the operation of chewing, the 
food is ground fine, and diluted with saliva. This saliva, 
of which more than one pound's weight is usually man- 
ufactured by the glands and swallowed with the food 
every day, contains salt, and alkali, and a substance 
called ptyalin, which has the property of changing 
starch into sugar. The food thus ground and diluted, 
is deposited in the stomach by the act of swallowing. 
Here, at a temperature of 98°, it is digested, the starch 
is converted by the ptyalin into sugar, the fat is sub- 
divided into exceedingly minute globules, the fibrin and 
gluten are dissolved, and the whole mass is softened by 
the operation of the gastric juice, aided by the heat of 
the stomach, until it is reduced to a greyish substance, 
of the consistency and appearance of gruel, which is 
called chyme. Some of this is absorbed through the 
coats of the stomach as soon as it is produced, so that 
the process of nourishment begins almost as soon as 
the food is swallowed, and one part, thus absorbed, 
keeps up the strength while the rest undergoes further 
necessary processes. The unabsorbed mass passes on 
from the stomach through its outlet, into the duode- 
num — so called — where three new liquids flow in 
upon it, namely, the bile from the liver, the pancrea- 
tic juice, and a mucus secreted by the duodenum it- 



THEREISAGOD. 11 

self. The bile removes the acidity of the chyme, and 
corrects its tendency to fermentation. The pancreatic 
juice continues the conversion of starch into sugar, and 
still further digests the fatty globules, in which it is 
aided by the third fluid. As the result of the action of 
the three, the grey chyme becomes changed into a milky 
liquid called chyle. This chyle flows on through the 
small intestines, which gradually drink it up through 
their lacteal glands, and carry it along to the thoracic 
duct in which they all meet, and through which they 
all pour the chyle they have absorbed into the jugular 
vein, where it mingles with the blood, and by the action 
of the heart is forced forward throuo-h the lunes, and 
thence takes the circuit of the body through the arteries ; 
carrying its fresh stock of fibrin, gluten, fat, and sugar, 
to all those parts of the body which need it to supply 
their waste, or to keep up the animal heat, or for any 
other purpose. 

Clearly this process by which food is first prepared to 
nourish the body by mastication and the action of 
saliva, and digestion with the gastric fluid, and the 
bile, and the pancreatic juice, and the intestinal mucus, 
each havmg its own cliemical peculiarity, and doing 
its own special work, and by which it is thus passed 
along from the teeth to the heart and arteries, and then, 
as it flows on through the circulation, is taken up wher- 
ever it is needed for the repair of damages, and the 
supply of the daily waste of the body ; this process 
is just as clearly a contrivance, as a cotton factory 
wliich takes in raw cotton and turns out sheeting ; and 
if the cotton factory argues a contriver, so does this 
process compel us to infer a designmg mind as its 
cause : which mind we call God. 



12 SERMONS. 

Having breakfasted, our machinist walks to the shop 
to commence his day's work. But what is walkmg, 
and how comes he to be able to walk ? It is the con- 
veyance of the body from place to jDlace, by first throw- 
ing its weight upon one foot and advancmg that which 
is free, and then throwing the weight upon the oth6r, 
and advancing the former, and so on. The limb 
which sustains the body is stiffened for that purpose by 
the tension of certain of its muscles, and the limb 
which is thrown forward is advanced by the contraction 
of certain of its muscles, by which, in connection with 
the hinge joints of the thigh, and knee, and ankle, the 
compound progressive motion is attained. These mus- 
cles are made to contract by the excitement of a nerve 
imbedded in them, and that excitement is produced by 
an impulse dispatched from the brain along the spinal 
marrow to the appropriate nerve. And the body is 
kept perpendicular through all the comi^licated motions 
of walking, by constant impulses — unconscious to us 
now, but very conscious when we were learning to walk 
— from the brain to different nerves, appropriately mov- 
ing appropriate muscles, and so seasonably counteract- 
ing any sideway tendency. 

Now, if a telegraphic dispatch were sent to a ship- 
master, and in obedience to it he should navigate his 
vessel — by puUing her ropes, and changing her sails 
as the wind required, and by the constant steerage of 
her lielm, — from India wharf in Providence, to India 
wharf in Boston, you would say, at once, there must be 
mind and contrivance tliere. So there must be mind 
l)ehind tliis arrangement for the navigation of a human 
body from one spot to another, in obedience to the tele- 



THEREISAGOD. 13 

graphic dispatches of the brain. Aiid that mind we 
call God. 

Our machinist now takes up his morning task. We 
will suppose him to be turning out some delicate and 
important piece of machinery in a lathe, with the pat- 
tern before him. Having adjusted the lathe so that it 
will advance and cut away so much of the iron as is 
needed, he leaves it, for a few moments, to work un- 
watched. A single false movement would ruin the 
piece. How does he know that no such false movement 
will take place in his absence ? Because it is a law of 
such a lathe to turn truly according to its exact adjust- 
ment. But how came it to be a law that it should turn 
truly, instead of untruly ? And how came it to be a 
law that steel should always be harder than iron, so 
that the small steel chisel will shave off the iron as it 
turns against it, as a knife cuts a pine stick ? And how 
came it to be a law that a machine made exactly accord- 
ing to its design, in parts, will resemble that design 
when put together ? Here is contrivance every where ; 
mind back of all that our machinist puts his hand unto 
to do. 

His lathe is turned by a steam-engine. But how 
comes it to be a law of water to boil and give off steam, 
always at 212° ? And how comes it to be a law that 
this steam can always be condensed into water again ? 
And why does steam always have expansive power ? 
And liow comes it to be a law that iron and copper 
boiler-plates have sufficdent strength and tenacity to re- 
sist and retain the force of the steam, long enough to 
make it useful in the engine ? And how comes the at- 
mospliere always to furnisli a resistance of exactly 15 

2 



14 SERMONS. 

pounds to the square inch — no more, no less, — to the 
movement of the piston ? And how comes it to be a 
law that wood and coal will burn and heat the boiler, 
while stones and sand are incombustible ? There is 
but one answer ; all is the fruit of design — every 
thing fits together ; and as a builder could not find 
stone, and bricks, and lumber of all sorts, and hard- 
ware, and glass, and all the materials for a house, piled 
upon a vacant lot, each in its exact proportion, and of 
the right quality, and all ready to go together into an 
edifice, without concluding that some mind was behind 
it all, intending a house, so no man can look at these 
details, and their mutual adaptations, without conclud- 
ing that a mind intending human life and human in- 
dustry is belnnd it all. That mind we call God. 

I insist upon it, that our machinist cannot select 
any thing that he sees around him, which shall not 
conduct him, by its own individual necessity, straight to 
the same grand conclusion. He himself and his skill, 
he cannot account for, without demonstrating a God. 
How comes it that his labor will now earn him, perhaps, 
twenty-five dollars a week, while ten years ago it would 
not yield him a dollar a day ? Because he is more 
skillful now. But what is skill ? It is the product of 
ingenuity and experience, by which a man is constantly 
improving as a workman ; by the use of new processes, 
and by recollecting all his old errors, to shun them, and 
all his old excellencies, to improve upon them. But 
whence come these laws of memory and forecast, mak- 
ing experience and ingenuity possible to man ? We get 
but the old answer, carrying us, here as before, back to 
that contriving mind, which we call God. 



THERE IS A GOD . 15 

Take the metals upon which he works. How does it 
happen that iron when heated becomes soft, and can be 
shaped and welded, and drawn out into wire ; that if 
heated further, it melts and takes the shape of its mould 
in cooling ? How does it happen that always when 
mixed with one and one half per cent, of carbon, it 
makes steel ? And how does it happen that if you heat 
steel red hot and plunge it in cold water, it becomes 
hard enough to scratch glass ; while if you heat and cool 
it slowly, it will be soft as iron ? How does it happen 
that at different degrees of hardness it has different 
colors ; so that steel of a straw yellow is just right for 
razors, and steel of a deep blue just right for sword- 
blades, and saws, and watch-springs ? 

How does it happen that zinc always has a specific 
gravity of 7 ; copper, of nearly 9 ; lead, of almost 11^ ; 
silver, of 10^ ; gold, of 19 ; and platinum, of 22 ? How 
comes it tliat 2 parts of copper united with 1 part 
of zinc, always make brass? that 90 parts of copper 
and 10 of tin, always make bronze ? that 92 of copper 
and 8 of tin, always make gun-metal ? that 80 of cop- 
per and 20 of tin, always make bell-metal ? that 4 of 
lead and 1 of antimony, always make type-metal ? 

How does it happen that water always freezes at 32° 
above zero, and mercury at 39° below it ? that alcohol 
boils at 173° degrees, and water at 212° ? that tin al- 
ways melts at 451° ; lead, at 633° ; silver at 1873° ; 
gold, at 2016°, and cast iron at 2786° ? 

Why is it that there is such an invariableness about 
those methods by which all these metals are wrought 
for use ? Why, for example, when a foundryman has 
tested different processes for melting his iron, and dif- 



16 SERMON'S. 

ferent kinds of sand for making his molds, until he 
lias fixed upon what he considers best, does he always 
trv exactly to repeat those best processes ? How does 
he know that what is once best, will always be best ? 

Only one answer is possible : there is law everywhere. 
It is a law that Uke causes shall produce like results, 
and man, and metals, and nature itself, obey that law. 
But who made it ? who impressed it upon the universe ? 

The truth is, that the machinist cannot intelliorentlv 
look upon a single process of his daily work, a single 
material which he uses in it. nay, upon any single thing 
which he sees in it, without being carried straight back 
to the conviction of some cause for all the principles and 
facts on the due knowledge and just use of which, his 
own success de})ends ; without feehng that if his com- 
pleted locomotive demonstrates to any but a fool, some 
mind as its contriver and constructer, much more do 
the materials and laws by which its contriver and con- 
structer were able to build it, demonstrate a mind as 
their cause. So that whether he think of it or not, he 
never strikes a blow of his hammer, without proving 
the being of a God. 

But let us suppose our machinist to have finished his 
day's task, and to walk out as the evening shadows be- 
gin to lengthen, till he reaches the gTeen fields. The 
freshness of nature charms his eye, and the sweet air is 
grateful to his lungs. But how comes nature to affect 
his soul, and what makes the air fi^om green fields 
pleasanter to his lungs, than the dusty breath of the 
paved streets ? 

Nature affects his soul in this wise. The sunhorht is 
reflected from the herbage and fohage, upon the outer 



THERE IS A GOD. 17 

convex lens, or aqueous humor of the eye, which passes 
it through the circular aperture of the iris to the inner 
convex lens or crystalline humor, which concentrates 
all the scattered rays into a beautifully clear miniature 
of that which is without, upon the retina or expansion 
of the optic nerve lying behind it. This nerve, passing 
out through the back of the eye, carries the sensation 
of this miniature, straight to the brain. It is a law of 
our nature, that a prevalent tint of green is grateful to 
the eye, and that the reflection of the varied objects 
which are set in a green landscape, should have a sooth- 
ing tendency upon the mind, and for this reason, the 
freshness of nature charms him. 

The air from the hills is pleasanter than that of the 
crowded town, because- it is clearer, less burdened with 
smoke and noisome odors ; it has purer oxygen, and 
the lungs need a large supply of oxygen to burn that 
amount of the starch, sugar, and fat of our food, which 
is necessary for keeping up the animal heat. 

Our machinist sees a wild rose-bush growing by the 
wayside. He carefully takes it up with all its roots, 
thinking to carry it home and plant it in his own yard. 
But how does he know that because it grew in one 
place, it will grow in another ? and what makes him sup- 
pose that if it live and bear flowers, they will be roses, 
and not hollyhocks ? what makes every bush bear its 
own kind, year by year ? 

He plucks a flower out of the grass, a violet. It has 
five petals, five stamens, one pistil. Every other violet 
on earth has just the same number ; with only such ex- 
ceptions of deformity as sometimes we find in men, 
born cripples. So every lily on earth has just six sta- 

2* 



18 SERMONS. 

mens and six petals. Every snow-drop has just six sta- 
mens, three petals, and one pistil. Every samphire 
blossom, just one stamen and one pistil. Find these in 
any continent or island, on any hill-slope, or prairie ; 
each is itself, and nothing else. 

Let him analyze water into its elements, and he will 
find hydrogen and oxygen, two to one in quantity, one 
to eight in weight. It is the same the world over. He 
may dip it from the Atlantic, or from Lake Superior, 
from the Amazon, or the Thames, or the Nile ; he may 
catch it from the spray of Niagara, or as it plashes down 
from the angry clouds, or shake it from the grass-blade, 
which it kisses by night — everywhere it is just the 
same ; " two to one, and one to eight." 

Let him analyze the air he breathes. Let him bring 
it down by a balloon from above the clouds, or let him 
bring it up from the lowest cranny in the earth; let 
him get it from the spicy gales of Araby, or from the 
cold blasts of Siberia, and he will find it everywhere 
identical ; two parts of oxygen to eight of nitrogen, in 
every ten. 

Let him analyze the hght which makes it day, and 
whose absence makes it night. He may take one of its 
rays in any quarter of the earth, and separate it into 
seven colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, 
red ; just seven, never more, never less — always the 
same, always in the same order. 

Let him look at light more fully. He will find that 
three great powers reside in every sunbeam — the power 
of illumination, of warmth, and of force. By its illu- 
mination, it makes the earth a place for locomotion and 
labor. By its heat it becomes the source of life and 



THERE IS A GOD. 19 

growth to the vegetable world, and of comfort to man. 
By its silent force it originates almost all the power 
which there is on earth. It sets in motion the 
winds, it raises vapor from all oceans, and lakes, and 
streams, and thus irrigates the globe, and gives man 
that mighty energy which he calls " water-power." 
But the sunbeam is not merely the primal source of 
wind and water power alone, it is the primal source 
also, of all steam and animal power. In a chemical 
point of view, steam power and animal power are pro- 
duced in precisely the same manner, by different ma- 
chinery. That is : to do its day's work, the steam- 
engine oxidizes a certain amount of carbon and hydro- 
gen, in the shape of coal and wood ; and this process of 
combustion in its furnace, furnishes it with its power 
to work. To do his day's work, the man oxidizes a 
certain amount of carbon and hydrogen in the shape of 
food ; and this process of combustion in his respiration, 
furnishes him with his power to work. See now how 
all this runs back to the sunbeam as its source. The 
water in the boiler, the coal and wood in the furnace 
of the steam-engine, all came from the sunbeam, — the 
water drawn up by it from the ocean and dropped down 
in rain to feed the rivers, and cisterns, and wells, that 
would else quickly be dry ; the wood grown by the 
vivifying power of the sun's light and heat, and all tlie 
time watered with the moisture which the sun draws 
up and lets fall upon it ; the coal, carbon which once 
was wood, the remains of ancient vegetation, force res- 
ervoired from the sun ages ago, and now first applied to 
human use. 

And so the food which the man's digestion converts 



20 SERMONS. 

into the source of his inward combustion, and its resul- 
tant force, is either vegetable — grown as the wood 
grows by the sunbeam's energy ; or animal, itself grown 
upon vegetables which that sunbeam produced. 

Now, as our machinist walks home in the twilight, 
and prepares to seek, in sleep, again, that refreshment 
which his weariness demands, let him ask himself how 
it happens that he has been thus all the day, living and 
moving and having his being among laws ; how it hap- 
pens that every thing is somehow obviously the effect 
of contrivance, so that whether he sleeps or eats, or 
walks or works, he is encompassed with results ; so that 
he cannot see or hear any thing, or touch any thing, or 
do any thing that can be accounted for without the 
supposition of a mind behind it all, the result of whose 
arrangement it is ? 

Here are these two simple principles which he cannot 
help believing and acting upon in all the affairs of life ; 
that every effect must have a cause, and that every 
cause implies a causing mind ; and here are hundreds 
and thousands of facts clustering about the experiences 
of one si]igie day, which his common sense tells him are 
effects — beautiful and wondrous evidences of the skill- 
ful energy of some wise and mighty mind. 

What resource is there for him, but to say — I am 
suri:ounded on every side, at every moment, with re- 
sults which must be the results of an Infinite Mind. 
" Every house is built by some man " — and he that built 
all these things, is God. 

See how absurd is the position which he must take if 
he denies this. His implements of labor, the very dead 
metals on which he works, the food he eats, the air he 



THEREISAGOD. 21 

breathes, the light that shines upon him, every thing — 
in heaven, on earth, in the waters under the earth, re- 
bukes him for reasoning differently on this question 
from his process in every other ; for blindly dashing in 
the face of every fact, and forsaking all probabilities for 
one dismal — I had almost said — fw-possibility. 

If he had a curious machine of his own invention ex- 
liibiting in the Mechanics' Fair, which he is sure is of 
great public advantage, and which he hopes will make 
his fortune — how angry it would make him, if some by- 
stander should turn sneeringly away from it, and say that 
" it was no credit to him ; " that '' it came by chance." 
He knows that he toiled wearily over it ; that it took 
months of patient contrivance to overcome all its diffi- 
culties and adjust its cunning movement ; and no 
wonder he is angry at the attempt to discredit his inge- 
nuity in so absurd a way. But if his machine argues 
him as its inventor, whom does he^ with his power to 
invent it, argue ? 

A logical escape from this argument in proof of the 
Being of a God, can be attempted only in one of the five 
following ways ; namely, 

1. By denying the facts, which every well-informed 
mind knows to be impossible : or, 

2. By denjring that every effect proves a cause, and 
that every cause implies a causing mind, which we all 
agree to be indisputable, and which no man can help 
taking for granted in every thing else but this argu- 
ment: or, 

3. By taking the ground that the universe as it is 
now, is a development^ or a sort of natural growth from 
a simple beginning, under the guidance of its own inhe- 



22 SERMONS. 

rent law ; to which it is enough to reply that this only 
removes the difficulty a step further back ; and compels 
us to ask who impressed upon matter that inherent law ? 
For if the universe is but a great plant, unfolding by its 
own impulse of growth, it becomes the most impressive 
contrivance we can possibly imagine, and demands an 
Infinite Contriver to account for it ; or, 

4. By taking the ground that every thing has always 
existed just as it does now, and therefore never had a 
Creator ; or, 

5. By the assertion that the argument does not prove 
one mind, but as many minds as there are effects. 

To the first, second, and third, I have already rephed. 
To the fourth, I answer, you cannot prove that every 
thing has always existed just as it does now. You can- 
not produce a particle of evidence to that effect, while I 
can produce a great amount of geological testimony in 
proof that every thing has not always existed as it is 
now. I can prove, for example, from Geology, that 
there has been a time when the earth existed as a mass 
of molten matter, and therefore was unfit to support life, 
and had no life upon it, animal or vegetable ; whence 
it follows that the life which now crowds the globe, 
must have had a beginning. I can prove from Geology, 
moreover, that at least as many as six distinct groups 
of organic beings have occupied the earth since it was 
habitable, and have left their remains upon it, and that 
man appears upon the earth last of them all ; which is 
radically inconsistent with the notion that things have 
always existed as they are. 

Moreover, I deny that if you could even prove that 
the universe has always existed as it is, you would then 



THERE IS A GOD. 23 

destroy the presumption of the existence of a God. 
You might change our idea of him to a coexisting and 
sustaining God, rather than a creator, but it would be 
just as unreasonable then to refuse to infer a causing 
mind from the universe as an effect, as it is now. 

And if you take the ground that, though these innu- 
merable effects around us, prove that each had a cause, 
for that very reason, they prove many Gods instead of 
one God : — I answer, in the first place, if it were so, so 
much the worse for the Atheist ; and, in the second 
place, that it is a principle of common sense never to 
suppose any more causes for an effect than are necessary 
to produce it. If the farmer finds that his fence has 
been pushed down in the night, and five hundred hills of 
corn have been trampled upon and injured, he does not 
infer that five hundred horses have jumped in and each 
trampled one hill ; because he knows that one horse could 
have done the whole. If his desk is broken open, and 
five hundred silver dollars are stolen therefrom, he does 
not infer five hundred thieves ; because it is much more 
reasonable to infer that one thief took the whole. 
The same principle leads us to infer one God instead of 
many, unless there are indications of such a want of 
harmony in different classes of effects as to make it more 
reasonable to suppose two Gods, than one God so con- 
trary in his developments. But there are no such indi- 
cations. Every thing harmonizes ; all the forces of na- 
ture interwork so beautifully, and agree together so 
wonderfully, as not merely to take away any possibility 
of inference of two hostile creating minds, but to fur- 
nish a very strong presumption, from this source alone, 
that he who made all things is One God. 



24 SERMONS. 

I have now hinted at the argument for the Divine 
Existence which the outward world affords, glancing at 
so inconsiderable a portion only as naturally seemed to 
group itself around some of the events of a single day, 
in the life of a single man. And though the evidence 
which I have cited, is but as a drop to the ocean, com- 
pared with the infinite amount with which the world is 
crowded, I think — so sure am I that it is reasonable, and 
that you are reasonable beings — it cannot fail to produce 
its natural result of deep conviction in your minds. I 
should pause here, as having done enough, if I did not 
feel anxious to lead your thoughts toward a most salu- 
tary and satisfying habit of looking always through the 
natural facts that immediately surround us, to God 
who is behind them ; that so his presence may come to 
be a common, constant consciousness with us, and grow 
to be the light and regulator of our lives. I ask you, 
then, to spend a few moments more in glancing around 
you, and gathering up some of the evidences which sur- 
round us in this house this evening ; and which, even as 
we sit here, compel us to see and recognize a God. 

This is a Church edifice which holds us, itself proving 
officially, at least, that men think there is a God. It 
holds us, first holding up itself : every stone in its foun- 
dations, every brick in its walls, every beam in its frame- 
work, every board in its floors and their superstructure, 
every nail that binds its parts together, mutely testifying 
of various mechanical laws and material facts, each one 
of which is sufficient of itself to demonstrate a Creator. 
Annul one single law, with reference to this edifice — 
the law of the cohesion of particles — and it would lie, 
a dry and shapeless dust heap, on the ground. Annul, 



THERE IS A GOD. 25 

instead, with reference to it, the law of gravitation, 
which binds it down upon its own particular " lot," and 
the swift gyration of the earth would hurl it instantly 
off into space, as the water drop spins away from the 
periphery of the revolving wheel. Ask who made those 
laws, and what keeps them laws, and you have but one 
answer — God. 

We are made visible to each other amid these even- 
ing shadows which rest upon the earth, by artificial 
light. In a distant part of the city is situated an exten- 
sive and complicated establishment, in which a certain 
kind of coal is exposed, in a close vessel, to a great heat, 
till it gives off copiously a kind of vapor, which being 
passed through various cleansing processes, is lodged at 
last in an immense receiver, from which it is crowded 
out into those pipes which bring it under the streets to 
these burners, where its combustion furnishes the illu- 
mination by which we see to carry on our service. All 
this would fail, if that coal did not contain the illumi- 
nating principle ; if heat would not expel it ; if lime 
and sulphate of iron would not purify it ; if it were not 
lighter than common air, so as to ascend out of the 
opened orifice ; if the law of the pressure of fluids was not 
such that the weight pressing down at the Gasometer 
did not extend its action to these extremities of the con- 
nected pipes, so as to eject the gas ; if it would not com- 
bine with the oxygen of the air and so, freely burn. At 
each of these points (and a score of others which I will 
not take time to mention,) you are obliged to ask a 
question to which there can be but one reasonable an- 
swer, and that answer — God. 

We see before us a huge instrument with scores of 

3 



26 SERMONS. 

keys, and dozens of stops, and hundreds of pipes, which, 
by the touch of a skillful hand, pours forth a flood of 
grand and sweet harmony. We find that a science is 
connected with it, and must be known, to comprehend 
and use it. And we find that science full of laws. We 
find sounds grouped in clusters of sevens, so that, begin 
where you will, and go up or down seven steps, and 
you are conscious that you have come to the same sound 
again, but on a higher or lower level of tone. More- 
over, you find — start with any note, where you will — 
that another note at the interval of a tone or semitone, 
or two tones and semitones (that is, a major or minor 
second, or a flat fifth,) will grate intolerably upon the 
ear ; while a third, or a perfect fifth, makes sweet accord, 
and five tones and two semitones give you the first note 
again. More than one hundred years ago, a man sat 
down in St. Martin's Street, Leicester Square, London, 
at the harpsicord, and running his hands over the keys, 
composed a strong and jubilant melody. When he had 
risen from the instrument, he recorded that melody in 
certain characters which were afterwards printed, and re- 
printed here. And when we sang God's praise in our 
opening song, we reproduced, note by note, the harmony 
of that harpsichord, and, no doubt, our minds, in doing 
so, felt some emotions kindred to those which Dr. Burney 
felt, when he first conceived those strains which have 
sounded from so many tongues. But how comes it 
that emotion and musical sound can be imprisoned in 
lines and dots, and so reproduced in any place at any 
time. How comes it that this organ here and that of 
St. Paul's Cathedral at London, might both play " Old 
Hundred," at the same moment, with the same identical 



_ THERE IS A GOD. 27 

sounds and same speed of movement, so that one vol- 
ume of tone should be the facsimile of the other, though 
3,000 miles apart ? Nay, how comes it that air crowded 
through a square wooden pipe, will always produce one 
quality of sound, and, through a round metal pipe, an- 
other ? How comes it that the flute stop should be 
smooth and sweet, the hautboy, slirill and sharp, the 
trumpet, spirited and loud ? How comes it that we are 
capable of receiving pleasure, and of being sensibly aided 
in our devotion, by musical sounds ? We may ask a 
thousand questions such as these, but the answer is 
ever one and the same ! 

Look, a moment, at yourselves, as you sit here. Five 
fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, five 
senses; five ^ five times repeated^ in each one of you. 
Either you were, each one of you, made by a mind that 
can count five, or you were not. If you were, all is 
clear. If you were not, spend a moment in calculating, 
with arithmetical accuracy, the chances that one single 
one of you would miss one of these five fives. Fig- 
ures will give the chances against both of your hands 
having five fingers, as 25 to 1. Add the feet, and the 
chances are 625 to 1, against your having the full num- 
ber of fingers and toes. Add the senses, and the 
chances are 3,125 to 1, that you will miss somewhere 
of the com.plete number. Now calculate these chances 
for two of you, and they swell to 9,765,625 to 1, against 
your both having the full complement. Calculate the 
chances for all this assembly, and a lifetime would not 
be long enough to cipher out the improbability that 
each one of you would get your five fives. Calculate 
those chances for the race living and dead, and it 



28 SERMONS. 

springs at once beyond the finiteness of mortal powers 
to tell how improbable it is that men with their five 
fingers, and five toes, and five senses, are not the work- 
manship of a God who can count five. If an archangel 
were to make the calculation for us, we could not even 
understand his exposition of it — it would be so vast. 

I have stood here, speaking, now, a long time. You 
have listened. If a Hindoo, knowing only his native 
jargon, had been present, he would only have had the 
knowledge that I was speaking, and you hearing. But 
while I have looked at you and uttered words, and you 
have looked at me and heard them, our minds have 
travelled over immense distances, under the leading, on 
your part, of the uttered sounds on mine, of the requi- 
sitions of my argument. Together we have roamed 
over the universe, glancing at clouds, and waters, and 
minerals and flowers ; peering into processes, searching 
after laws, and questioning on what this glorious fabric 
stands. I have thought of God, and you have thought 
of God — my thought suggesting yours — through the 
utterance which it found at my lips, and the entrance 
to your ear and mind, which that utterance gained. 

Now how is all this ? How can we explain these 
facts — that the air which my lungs have expelled 
through my throat, manufactured there into sound, by 
the action of my will upon the vocal machinery, and so 
stirring vil^rations in all the atmosphere of this house, 
should affect the auditory machinery of each one of you, 
so tliat you have become conscious of the sounds which I 
have made. And — infinitely vaster question — how is 
it to be explained that these sounds have taken up my 
ideas and carried them over to you, so that you have 



THEREISAGOD. 29 

thought what I thought ; — no mistake ever being made, 
but each sound clinging to, and bodying forth always 
its own proper idea ? And — most vast question of all — 
how is it that these sounds and ideas awaken conviction 
and emotion, so that ycTur hearts throb with mine ? 

Answer this who can ! None of us can answer it in 
detail, for the mystery of it is too magnificent. We can 
only hover around the outer circle of obvious facts which 
surround it, and stand in awe of the solemn voice which 
issues out of their depths, declaring '' it is He that mak- 
eth the seven stars and Orion, and that turneth the 
shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day 
dark with night, that calleth for the waters of the sea 
and poureth them out upon the face of the earth — the 
Lord is his name,^^ 

Does not this all furnish us an efficient certainty of a 
God ? Xay, have we not, actually, each just as much 
evidence that there is a God here, as that there are 
men here ? I am persuaded that you are here, because 
I see you here. My senses may deceive me ; that is 
possible ; but it is not reasonable for me to believe that 
they do. So our senses may deceive us as to these evi- 
dences that God is here ; but we do not believe that 
they do. It would be absurd to imagine deceit in either 
case, and it is just as absurd to doubt that God is here, 
as to doubt that lue are here. If I shut my eyes and 
hear the organ play, I do not act on the ordinary prin- 
ciples of common sense, if I do not infer that somebody 
is blowing its bellows, and somebody sitting at its keys, 
though I see them not. And, just so, I am false to 
right reason, if, from aU the tokens of creative and sus- 
taining energy which cluster, at this moment, around 

3* 



30 SERMONS. 

US, I do not conclude that God is here, though I see 
him not ; if, from the innumerable proofs of design 
which encompass our path and our lying down, and be- 
set us behind and before in our daily experiences, I do 
not infer an Infinite and glorious Presence, invisibly 
brooding our life. 

Yes — nature, with her ten thousand voices, speaks, 
evermore, one language ; in her majesty and in her low- 
liness, ever and everywhere uttering, with the same 
reverence, the Eternal name. Her testimonies are just 
as truthful here within these four walls ; in our houses, 
and workshops ; as out among the everlasting hills. 
And though, when she speaks in her grandeur, she may 
awe and delight us most ; when she speaks in her com- 
mon, every-day practicalness, she may work her most 
thorough conviction in our hearts. Let us listen to her, 
then, everywhere. 

As we gaze out upon her sky-piercing mountains, — 
basking their hoary heads in the sunlight that is above 
the clouds, robed in the glittering garment of the icy 
glacier, and bathing their feet in their own roaring 
torrents, we ask, with Coleridge : — 

"' Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven, 
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers 
Of lovehest blue, spread garlands at your feet? — 
God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
Answer ! and let the ice plains echo, God ! 
God ! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice ! 
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ! 
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God ! 



I 

I 



THERE IS A GOD. 31 

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! 
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest ! 
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm ! 
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds ! 
Ye signs and wonders of the element ! 
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise ! '* 

But let us not feel that we must go to the Alps to 
find Jehovah ; the humblest rock, the most familiar 
plant, the noisest mill, the lowliest home, of New Eng- 
land can suggest him just as forcibly as the vale of 
Chamouni. And if we will only hearken to the still 
small voice of common things, we shall find them whis- 
pering tenderly that majestic name. 

" Thou Lord ! who rearest the mountain's hight, 
And mak'st the cliffs with sunshine bright ; 
Oh grant that we may own Thy hand 
No less in every grain of sand. 

" In all the immense, the strange, the old, 
Thy presence careless men behold ; 
Yet in the little, weak, and mean, 
By faith Thou art as clearly seen. 

" Teach Thou that not one leaf can grow, 
Till life from Thee, within it flow ; 
That not a speck of dust can be, 
Fount of Being, save by Thee. 

" Inspire us, Thou, in every glance 
Of all our dreams confused as chance. 
In every change of mortal things, 
To see a power from Thee that springs ; 



32 SERMONS. 

" In every human word and deed, 
Each flash of feeling, will, or creed, 
To know a plan ordained above. 
Begun and ending all in love. 

" So, smallest bubbles here on earth 
With us shall claim an heavenly birth, 
And each f^int atom floating by, 
Flash m the luster of Thine eye." 

Wherefore, let us stand in awe and sin not, since 
God compasseth our path and our lying down, and is 
acquainted with all our ways. 

Being certified at every moment, by what we see in 
and around ourselves, both of his constant nearness and 
his unfailing munificence, let us receive with meekness 
his revealed word, as our guide unto salvation ; let his 
tender mercies lead us to return his love ; and let us 
never more look forth upon the magnificence of this 
outward world, without considering what manner of 
persons we — for whom it was made — ought to be, in 
all holy conversation and godliness ; being diligent, 
that when this transitory life shall be past, we, through 
his grace in our Redeemer, may be found of him in 
peace, without spot and blameless ! 



II. 

THE WHOLE BIBLE, GR NONE* 



MARK VII: 13. 



MAKING THE WORD OF GOD OP NONE EFFECT THROUGH TOUR 
TRADITION, WHICH YE HAVE DELIVERED. 

These words were uttered during the last year be- 
fore the crucifixioii, in a discussion at Capernaum, 
between Christ and certain Scribes and Pharisees who 
had dogged his footsteps from Jerusalem, apparently as 
spies of the rulers of the Jews. They found fault be- 
cause they saw some of his disciples eat bread without first 
washing the hands, — an offence against a '^tradition" 
which " the elders " had taken the responsibility of ad- 
ding to the law and the testimony. Jesus replied by 
denouncing the addition as unauthorized of God, and 
rebuking them for daring to tamper with the integrity 
of Divme Revelation ; showing, by illustration, how the 
Jews had damaged the power of the Old Testament, by 
" laying aside the commandment of God," in favor of 
"the commandments of men," to that extent that it 
was declared of them : "in vain do they worship me." 

* Williams Hall, November 27th, 1859. 

(33) 



34 SERMONS. 

He proceeded to characterize the effect of their action 
upon the Law of God by the use of a Greek word, tak- 
ing its significance from an adjective which had long 
before been applied by Plato and Thucydides to human 
laws, in the sense of robbing them of their force, and 
making them invalid and null. So that his real meaning 
would perhaps best express itself, in our common speech, 
thus : You have made the Bible useless by claiming the 
power to add to it, or take from it, at your discretion. 

If this principle here enumerated be correct, its ap- 
phcation is broad enough to cover the New Testament 
as well as the Old, and the conduct of the world, as 
well as that of the Elders of the Jews ; and it carries us 
inevitably to the proposition : the whole Bible — just as 
it is — or no Bible, If the Jews could not add to, or 
take from, the '' Law and the Prophets," without making 
them of none effect through their tradition ; no more 
can we tamper with the New Testament, without empty- 
ing it of its divine and supernatural force as a guide 
of Hfe ; so that we must take the Scriptures just as they 
are, as given by inspiration of God, and profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness, or we have no divine revelation. Any 
thing less, or else, is other and null. The Bible is one 
rounded, completed, compacted unit, which, through its 
sixty-six books, like the Fresnel lens through its multi- 
farious pieces of glass ground each to its own relative 
place, transmits the Hght of Heaven, pure, clear, safe, 
— able to make us wise unto salvation through faith 
which is in Christ Jesus ; or it is an imposture and an 
absurdity. 

Mr. Parker, indeed, — much the most plausible man 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 35 

who has, in our day, attacked the Inspiration of the 
Bible — has urged another possibiHty. He says QDis- 
course of Matters pertaining' to Religion, p. 346), '^ un- 
less we reject this [the Bible] entirely, one of two things 
must be done ; either we must pretend to believe the 
whole, absurdities and all ; or else we must accept what 
is true, good, and Divine therein ; take each part for 
what it is worth ; gather the good together, and leave 
the bad to itself." And then he proceeds to argue that 
the true method is ^' to divide the Word rightly ; sepa- 
rate mythology from history, fact from fiction, what is 
religious and of God, from what is earthly and not of 
God; — to take the Bible for what it is worth." He 
further claims that if we keep insisting on the belief of 
the whole Bible, we shall '' drive bad men to hypocrisy, 
good men to madness, and thinking men to ' infidelity ; ' 
throw obstacles in the way of religion and morality, and 
tie the millstone of the Old and New Testaments about 
the neck of piety." His plan therefore is, to add to the 
two old possibilities — of accepting or rejecting the Bible 
as an inspired whole sent from God, — this, of accepting 
a part of it as good and important, and rejecting the 
rest as false and harmful ; — he to decide, by criticism 
of his own, what and how much to accept and reject, for 
himself ; others, of course, to make the same decision 
for themselves. 

Now the simple question is whether there is any such 
middle ground as this ; whether it is the safe thing, and 
the right thing, and the thing which God intended to 
have us do, — or, indeed, a thing in any wise logically 
possible, — neither to accept the Bible, nor to reject it ; 
but to half accept and half reject it ; each man of us 



36 SERMONS. 

proportioning his semi-acceptance and semi-rejection to 
liis own notions of what he needs, and of its adaptation 
to that need ? I beheve, and shall seek to prove, that 
such a compromise measure as this is utterly unrea- 
sonable, and impossible ; and that, if we propose to 
carry our common sense into our religion, and be gov- 
erned by it, — we must accept the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament as a complete, self-consistent, 
and indivisible unity ; or reject them as such. It comes 
to this, just, and only this ; nothing more, notliing less, 
nothing else ; — the whole Bible, or none ! 
The first consideration which I urge is : — 
I. There is no need of the introduction of this inter- 
mediate hypothesis^ because all those objections to the 
inspiration of any part of the Bible which have led to 
it, can be disposed of without it, 

I think five classes will include all those objections 
which Mr. Parker thinks fatal to the genuineness of 
those portions of Scripture which contain them. 

1. He alleges that many passages of the Bible are 
records of imperfection and of sin. That indeed is so ; 
for much of the Bible is the history of the race, and the 
history of such a race, can be none other than a record 
of imperfection and of sin. But the record is for warn- 
ing and not for allurement. Nobody was ever tempted 
by it. And it is a total misconception of the whole 
character of the Bible, to suppose that the presence in 
it of human history, teaching by example, can destroy 
the claim of any part of it to be designed of God for the 
benefit of man. 

2. It is alleged that the Bible gives anthropomorphic 
views of God ; and in representing him to repent, to be 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 37 

angry, etc., it contradicts the demonstrable facts of his 
immutability, and of his infinite kindness ; and that all 
such passages ought to be expunged, as untrue in fact, 
and unworthy in intent. But to this, the ready and 
reasonable answer is, that |liese representations of God 
were conde^ensions on the part of exact spiritual truth 
to the mental weakness and childlikeness of the Jewish 
mind. If God proposed to teach spiritual truth at all 
to the Hebrews, in their low estate, as they came out of 
Egypt ; he must stoop toward their level, he must talk 
to them in simple graphic langaiage, as we talk to our 
children, and such stooping, instead of impairing, im- 
measurably hightens the honest value of the Sacred 
record. 

3. So we are told that the Bible contains contradictions 
of some facts of science, of some assertions of collateral 
history, and indeed of some assertions of its own ; and 
that all such passages ought to be cast out as having no 
place in a book of God — which should be one of purely 
self-consistent truth. But these imagined contradictions 
all vanish when we remember that the Bible was writ- 
ten to men, for the good of men, and in the speech of 
men ; and not to be a manual of science, but a guide 
of life. Hence it is no more true that it is a contradic- 
tion of the facts of the solar system, that the Bible 
should describe the sun as rising and setting, while it is 
the earth, and not the sun, which really moves ; than it 
is that common human speech should do so. And if 
there is any instance where the Bible does not seem to 
square altogether with human history, we think it quite 
as likely to be authentic as the history is ; while its own 
alleged contradictions are never any thing more than 

4 



38 SERMONS. 

the varying reports of different parties of what they saw 
on different sides of the same scene — like the knights 
who disagreed about the shield, because one saw only 
the silver, and the other only the golden side. 

4. Mr. Parker says that the claim which is made for 
the inspiration of the apostles, cannot be granted, for 
they were not ready for all emergencies, they made mis- 
takes, they sinned, they were obviously not infallible ; 
and then he refers to the facts — that Peter needed a 
special revelation to settle the question whether the 
Gentiles were to come into the kingdom with the Jews ; 
that Paul and Barnabas quarreled ; that Paul withstood 
Peter to the face ; and that it was necessary to have a 
grand consultation to decide whether the Gentiles must 
needs keep the Law of Moses. Therefore, he argues, 
those men could not be infallible ; and, if not infallible, 
then not inspired ; and, if not inspired, then their writ- 
ings may be sorted and sifted at pleasure ; — what 
seems good being freely taken — what seems doubtful, 
as freely thrown away. But nobody, that I know of, 
contends that the men whom God moved to write the 
books of the Bible were perfect men, or that, because 
God superintended their composition of what was con- 
tributed by them to the Sacred Canon, they were there- 
fore lifted at all times, and on all subjects, into the at- 
mosphere of the divine omniscience. We grant that 
they were men, imperfect men ; often sinning, and mis- 
taking truths of thought, and ways of action. All we 
claim for them is, that, when they acted as God's aman- 
uenses, they wrote what they were moved to write by 
the Holy Ghost. And our theory, which saves the 
trustworthiness of their record, by making them infalli- 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 39 

ble at the special time, and for the special purpose of its 
composition, and leaving them fallible at other times, 
accounts for all the facts in the case just as well as does 
that of Mr. Parker, or that at the other extreme — if any 
one could be found to father it — which he opposes. 

5. So, once again, it is affirmed that there are por- 
tions of the Scriptures which favor positive immorality, 
and which therefore ought to be expunged. Mr. Parker 
claims that the imprecations of David inculcate the 
spirit of revenge ; that some of the Proverbs of Solomon 
are selfish ; some of the language of Ecclesiastes skep- 
tical, and that Christ himself taught error in regard to 
the eternal punishment of the wicked. 

In reply, we justify those imprecations as the natural 
language of an honest and healthy soul, when strongly 
excited in view of infamous meanness and cruelty. 
And as to the Proverbs of Solomon and the doubts of 
the Preacher, we judge, as of many of the biographies 
of the Old Testament, that when read in sympathy with 
their design, and estimated by that standard which is 
just for them, their teaching is truthful and salutary ; 
while we hold the doctrine of our Saviour with reference 
to future punishment, to be perfectly consistent witli 
the whole tenor of the Bible on that subject, and there- 
fore claim for it the highest possible evidence of truth. 

And so I insist that there is not one of these reasons 
which will justify any man in rejecting any book, chap- 
ter, or verse, of the Sacred record ; because all these ob- 
jections which — if undisposed of — might warrant such 
rejection of it, can be reasonably solved without it ; and 
if they can be solved without it, they ought to be, for 
such rejection would at once — as we shall see by and 
by — prove fatal to any inspiration, and any Bible at all. 



40 SERMONS. 

II. I noiv proceed^ in the second place^ to argue that 
we must accept the ivhole Bible or none of it, because 
all the evidence which loe have to establish any of it as 
from God, establishes all of it, as from Him, 

We assume that our Creator — our Father which is 
in Heaven — he who made speech in us, and gave us 
minds which can receive and be conscious of communi- 
cations from without, and be reasonably certified of 
their genuineness ; can speak to us, and can so speak 
to us as to meet all those conditions of authenticity 
which his own precaution has stationed to guard the 
gates of the soul against the invasion of folly and error. 
He who himself gave us the countersign — cannot he 
pass the sentinel ? 

What, then — the question simply becomes — what, 
then, is reasonable evidence that any given book is actu- 
ally a revelation from God ? 

Is it when itself assumes to be thus inspired ? Then 
were the books of Mohammed, of Ann Lee, of Joseph 
Smith, inspired. Is it when its teachings are marvel- 
ously useful to the world ? Then were the works of 
Bacon, and of Bunyan, inspired. 

Plainly this question of Inspiration must be a ques- 
tion of simple facts, — whether Moses in the wilderness 
and John on Patmos, with their intervening collabora- 
tors, at different times and places, in writmg those 
Greek and Hebrew manuscripts which have been Eng- 
lished into our Bible, were or were not, in the tracing 
of those characters, under special divine influence, and 
so — in a sense — the amanuenses of God ; writing just 
that, all that, and only that which he desired ? It is 
plain that only two parties could have been cognizant 



THE WHOLE BIBLE. OR NONE. 41 

of this fact — if it were a fact — and could personally 
testify concerning it ; possible even only one, (for God 
might not have revealed to these men the use he made 
of them,) and we feel obliged to throw out the testimony 
of the men themselves, if they gave any, because we 
cannot prove that they do not speak falsely ; and if we 
once lay it down as a principle that men's own asser- 
tions are competent to establish their inspiration, and 
that of tliek books, we shall have quite too many apos- 
tles, and too many Bibles. We are driven, then, to the 
conclusion that we can only know, for a reasonable cer- 
tainty, that any particular man is inspired of God, when 
God himself certifies us that he is. Tliis he must do, 
of course, in some manner consonant with those laws of 
mind which he has established, and to which, if he 
would stir our convictions, he himself must be presumed 
to conform, in liis communications with the world. 
This he may do by appealing to one single feeling which 
he created in us ; doubtless for this very use. It is just 
a modification, or expansion of the common instinct of 
cause and effect, suggesting that certain effects irresistibly 
demonstrate the cotemporary presence of divine power. 
Thus, if one of this audience were to sink prostrate to 
the floor, and lie breathless for a few moments, and 
then rise up again, you would say : she has fainted, and 
then revived ; — your sense of cause and effect would 
be satisfied ; you would never dream of special divine 
power in raising her up, but only of that ordinary divine 
power, which we so much forget ; which strings all our 
muscles, and inflates all our lungs, and moves on with 
resistless energy all the tides and forces of our hfe. 
But suppose we were to see, painfully hobbUng up 

4* 



42 SERMONS. 

this central aisle some poor unfortunate, whose abbre- 
viated and malformed limbs have excited our daily pity 
for years, as we have passed him on Washington Street; 
our walking pace taking us by his halting progress as a 
clipper in a stiff breeze shoots by a raft. And suppose 
that here, before our very eyes, some good man should 
lay his hands upon him, and tell him to stand up and 
be whole ; and, on that word, he should stand up erect 
and strong, and the physicians should go to him and 
feel that the short thigh bones that were so crooked, 
are now, in an instant, long and straight, and the mus- 
cles that were lumped and knotted, are now slender 
and pliable, and the joints that were stiflf and ossified, 
are now flexile and natural, and the whole frame that 
was cramped, and unsightly, and feeble, is now upright, 
and comely, and athletic — all in an instant, all at a 
spoken word, and yet all genuine beyond possibihty of 
mistake. Then this law within us would say, at once: 
this effect suggests, and will have for itself, a cause be- 
yond the sphere of all that is merely natural and ordi- 
nary. God alone could do that. God did that — by 
extraordinary manifestation of his divine power, through 
the channel of that good man's voice. 

Suppose another case. Let there come in four men 
bending under a weight covered by that black pall 
which always heralds our funeral rites. Let them set 
down the bier — here where all may see it. Let them 
turn down the dark robe from over the face, and open 
the coffin lid. And let there be obvious there to every 
shrinking sense, features bloated, discolored, corrupting 
— too long withheld from the sheltering embrace of 
the grave. Let the physicians satisfy themselves that 



THE WHOLE BIBLE. OR XONE. 43 

there is no more life there than there is within the ribs 
of the skeletons that rattle under then- touch of science, 
in their cabinets at home. Then let this same good 
man stand over that loathsome ^vi-eck of what was once 
life and sti-ength and manly beauty, and echo those 
words of old : •• I say unto thee, arise I " And let the 
dead erect himself out of his deliled investments, and 
come forth from that corruption, and walk before us 
here, all offence vanished away, with ruddy cheek and 
beaming eye. and voice of exultant thankfiihiess. and 
then, this inward sense of ours would say : here is the 
reasonable sign and demonstration of a presence that is 
divine. Xo merely human power could perform such 
a work as that, and this man who has done it. since he 
cannot be God himself, must be surcharged, for the 
time being, with enough of God's own power to authen- 
ticate him to us. as, beyond ciuestion, an ambassador 
from Him. And since — if we suppose ourselves to 
have no Bible, we infinitely need spiritual guidance, — 
it should not surprise us for God thus to send a mes- 
senger to reveal to us that truth, on the knowledge of 
which our very eternal life depends. And since we 
cannot beheve that our Heavenly Father, who pitieth 
his children, would thus commission a bad man to mis- 
lead us, we reasonably infer that he has sent a good 
man to instruct us. and then we reasonably receive that 
good man's spoken or written message, as being truth 
from God. 

If I am not wholly wrong in my conception of the 
matter, this is the only way in which it can ever be 
strictly reasonable for man to believe in a revelation 
from God ; namelv : when it comes thus authenticated 



44 SERMONS. 

by miracle in the person of its writer, or in the person 
of somebody who vouches for the inspiration of its 
writer. For if I believe that Jesus, and Paul, and 
John, wrought miracles, and so established the inspira- 
tion of what they taught and wrote, I must receive their 
endorsement of other's writings, as being as really divine 
trutli as any other proposition from their lips, or pen. 

Thus I receive the entire Old Testament on the au- 
thority of Christ, who daily used and reverently quoted 
it. It is susceptible of the rigidest historical demon- 
stration that the Old Testament in the hands of Christ 
and the Apostles, was the same — page by page, and 
even line by line — as that which is in our hands ; while 
Christ endorsed it as a tchole. So that if we have evi- 
dence that any of it is inspired, we have that same 
evidence that all of it is. 

And, when we pass to examine the proof that Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude 
— the eiglit writers of the twenty-seven books of the 
New Testament — gave this miraculous token that they 
were inspired of God ; and so establish the Inspiration 
of those books, and thus and therefore of the whole 
New Testament ; we find that the only question that 
can be legitimately raised, is one that covers a whole 
man, and therefore all of the one or several books which 
came from his pen. I believe, if you would give me 
time (which, of course, I cannot take here), I would 
submit to you as sufficient, if not as voluminous evi- 
dence, that those eight men wrought miracles, — works 
aside from, and above, and even wholly out of, the or- 
dinary course of nature, — as that Cicero wrote the 
orations attributed to him, or that Caesar was stabbed in 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR XOXE. 45 

the Senate house on the Ides of March, or that Socrates 
drank hemlock at Athens, by the decree of the judges. 

But one thing at least is clear ; if I should succeed, I 
should succeed in establishing the inspiration of the 
books of the Xew Testament each as a icholc. and if I 
should fail in the case of either of the eight men, I 
should fail as a ichole to justify the place of what he 
wrote, in the Bible. If then they were inspired at all, 
their inspiration covers every hue and letter of their 
books. If they were not inspired, then )io line nor let- 
ter of their books is inspired : so that it is impossible 
to take their work apart, and say : this verse of John- s, 
this chapter of Peter's, this argument of Paul's, is not 
inspired, and must be dissected from its connection, and 
thrown aAvay as worthless, while you receive the rest. 
It is, it must be, '^ the whole or none I " 

III. But let us pass to the consideration that, froin 
the very nature of the case^ such a semi-revelation as is 
supposed by those icho would accept apart of the Bible ^ 
and reject the rest^ according to their own judgment^ 
would be just no revelation at all. 

The specific idea of a '^ revelation " is of a disclos- 
ing to the mind, from an external source, of some- 
thing which was wholly unknown to it before. And 
when we come to the question of what God's revelation 
to men must presumably be, we need to add to this the 
idea, that it is a disclosure to man, not only of something 
which, as a matter of fact, was before unknown to him, 
but something which he could not know without it ; 
for it would not be like God to bow the very heavens, 
and come down before men's eyes by miracle, to teach 
them that which is within their reach, — from their own 
mental suggestion, or from any other source. 



46 SERMONS. 

But if this be the true idea of revelation as it attaches 
to the Bible, and if God has given us, by a series of 
miracles, this series of books, it is because the truths 
taught in them would never, and could never have 
come into our possession through any other process. 

Those books may indeed bring those truths to us por- 
trayed in a very unmiraculous aspect, — some being re- 
flected from the story of good men's lives, and some 
from the record of bad men's fate; some interwoven 
with proverbs, and some interwreathed with psalm and 
song ; some draped in the cloudy mantle of prophecy, 
and some beautified in the light vestments of parable — 
but, however they may be garmented and garlanded for 
their impression upon our mind, they have come from 
God to us ; the lessons which they speak, never so sim- 
ply, he taught them ; and neither they, nor we, would 
know them but for Him, and for this sending of His 
wisdom, through them, to earth, and to us. 

Now I say that it is not only an impertinence, but an 
absolute nullification and denial of any inspiration at 
all to them, if we take these books — which descend 
thus, as out of heaven to us, freighted with knowledge 
which comes thus because it is above, and not only 
above, but out of the reach, and not only out of the 
reach, but out of the original conception of our minds — 
and proceed to criticise them, and lay out this chapter, 
and reject that verse, and question the other paragraph 
because — because we do not altogether like them ! If 
they are inspired, it will not invaUdate their inspiration, 
tliat we like them not ; and being medicine for our 
spiritual sickness, and medicine being apt to be bitter, 
and so not palatable, perhaps it is rather to be expected 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 47 

than otherwise, that we shall not like them — in the 
sense of finding them palatable to our diseased moral 
taste. If we reject them on this ground, we leap, at 
once, into the judgment seat over them, or rather, we 
degrade them so low that from the lowliness where we 
stand, we can look down upon and condemn them. In 
so doing, we rob them of any possible claim to Inspira- 
tion. If they are inspired, then they are discussions of 
truth above the range of our judgment ; the fact that 
they are inspired, lifts them there ; and we have no 
more right to criticise them, than the lad at his multi- 
plication table has to assume to throw out here an equa- 
tion, and there a formula, and elsewhere a problem, 
from the cipherings of Newton among the stars, or 
Bowditch among the waves. If we criticise them, we 
assume to have the knowledge to do so ; and to have 
that knowledge we must be above them ; and for us to 
be above them, they must be below us ; and so we take 
them down from the loftiness of God's thoughts — 
which are not ours — and degrade them to the human 
level of mere good advice, to be taken or rejected at 
our pleasure. 

The relation of Reason to Revelation is this. Reason 
must decide concerning any man or any book, whether 
he, or it, brings — properly authenticated — a special 
message from God. When she has become satisfied 
that this is the case, she meekly bends her ear to receive 
that message, without assuming the power to judge t7, 
in detail. It would not have been communicated thus 
supernaturally, unless it had been beyond her natural 
reach ; and if it is beyond her natural reach, it is be- 
yond her power of criticism. She may have many just 



48 SERMONS. 

ideas concerning it, but it necessarily deals so much 
with matters out of her sphere, that it will not be safe 
for her to sit in judgment upon it. Having accepted it, 
in the mass, as authenticated from God, she has accepted 
it all as imperative over herself. And for her to treat 
it as mere advice, which she may criticise in its details, 
and follow, or not, as she pleases, would be to degrade 
it at once from any dignity of inspiration, and empty it 
of all authority — the vitalest element of a Revelation 
from God. 

It is amazing with what sophistry — ludicrous if it 
were not so sad in its results — men, claiming common 
sense, befool themselves upon this subject ; in their haste 
to put out the shining torch which God's hand is hold- 
ing down to light us out of " the horrible pit and the 
miry clay," violating those first principles of reasoning, 
obedience to which, on all other subjects, they make the 
very test of sanity. Let me illustrate their folly. 

Here is a great ship coming up the bay, under full 
sail, for our harbor. Her swelling pyramids of snowy 
canvas, which the salt breath of the sea fills as it 
crowds her along her course, tower above a hull deep 
laden with the treasures of the Orient. A foreign flag 
floats at her main. Her keel never ploughed these 
waters before. Her captain, her officers, her crew, look 
for the first time upon these western waves. As she 
makes the outer Light, a pilot boat hails her, and puts 
on board one of those shrewd and hardy sailors who 
know their way in the dark among all our reefs and 
shoals ; and the ship is put under his charge. 

I think we may say with propriety, that this man is a 
revelation to that ship, of the crooked things between 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 49 

Point Alderton and Long Wharf, which must be made 
straight, before she can reach her moorings. 

Now suppose the Captain to receive this revelation 
" as a whole," yet to take with it the course which Mr. 
Parker proposes to apply to the Bible ; namely : accept 
what seems to him " true, good, and divine therein ; take 
each part for what it is worth ; gather the good together, 
and leave the bad to itself." 

As she glides along the edge of the shoal that fringes 
the Great Brewster, heading straight for George's Island, 
he says to the brown and brawny man who is guiding 
the sailors at the wheel : — 

" Pilot ! I expect you know the way ' in general,' up 
this harbor, but, unless I am greatly deceived, you are 
going to run us on that fort just ahead. It doesn't look 
reasonable to me to steer m that way, and I should my- 
self advise putting her head about five points more to 
the South'ard." 

The pilot touches his tarpaulin as he asks, in re- 
ply • — 

" Ever here afore, Cap'p'n ? " 

" Never." 

" Well, I guess you don't want to go into the Nan- 
tasket Roads to find the ship channel — I never saw it 
anywhere else except a leetle to the Nor'r'ad of that 
same fort ! " 

The Captain subsides for the time being ; only how- 
ever, ever and anon, to return to the charge. He dis- 
trusts the propinquity of Lovel's Island ; wants to run 
the wrong side of Nix's Mate ; thinks the deep water 
ought to be more over toward Point Shirley ; and when 
— farther up — he sees the ship's bowsprit persistently 

5 



SERMONS 



pointed toward one of the port-holes of the battery on 
Castle Island, he bursts forth again : — 

" Come, come Pilot, I can't stand such steering as 
this ; bear away more for the city ; I don't want to sur- 
vey the islands, but to bring up to the wharves. I have 
no doubt you have ' a general idea ' of this harbor, but 
it doesn't stand to reason to run down another fort ! " 

The pilot retires in disgust from the quarter-deck, 
wishing he could moor the ship near enough to Somer- 
ville to discharge the Captain into the Insane Asylum, 
before leaving, himself; and the latter ''takes the re- 
sponsibility." Round whirls the wheel, and round goes 
the ship's head toward the smooth but shallow expanse 
that stretches Northward, and seems to promise a 
straighter course toward the city. Her sails are now 
distended with a fairer breeze, and she rushes on like 
the leading race-horse nearing the goal, until she brings 
up, with a dull staggering, in the soft sand of the Mid- 
dle Ground ; where the tide soon leaves her high and 
dry! 

Who does not see the outrageous folly of a perfect 
stranger's setting up thus to criticise the revelation of 
the course of a ship in from the outer Light, of an old 
sailor who has been up and down more times than he 
has hairs on his head and beard both ! But wherein is 
tliat man less wickedly foolish, who sets himself up to 
criticise the revelation of the onmiscient God to man ; — 
saying " I tliink this must be wrong ; I am clear that 
ought to be different ; I must take each part for what 
it is worth ! " 

You are smitten down with sudden sickness. You 
fear it is unto death ! You writhe in agonizing pain ; 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 51 

your whole inward nature seems to be in dreadful dis- 
order. You have no skill to divine the cause ; you do 
not know which way the channels of life run, where 
the obstruction is, how it can most hopefully be 
reached, or by what process removed. You do not 
therefore know what to do to relieve yourself. 

You send, with utmost haste, for a physician, whose 
skill you can trust ; whom you believe to know, as well 
as any man can, those hidden channels of life, and how 
to purge away the obstructions of disease. He comes. 
He examines your condition. From the beat of your 
pulse, the feel of your skin, the look of your tongue ; 
from your confused account of the seat and style of 
your sensations ; from all which he can see and infer — 
he makes up liis mind what the matter is, and what 
treatment will be likeliest to afford relief. Thoughtfully 
he devises his remedies, and combining this pill with 
that powder and the other lotion, he hopes to check 
and reverse the progress of the malady, and start you 
on the road toward health again. He is a revelation to 
you of that inward disturbance, and of what must be 
done for its repair. 

Will you now be a sane man — nay, can you reason- 
ably expect to be long a live one — if you receive that 
revelation '' as a whole," yet assume to criticise its 
parts ; following the prescription in some particulars, 
yet rejecting it in others ; swallowing this pill, but 
throwing away that powder and the other lotion, be- 
cause you do not like their aspect, or their odor, or be- 
cause you distrust the cabalistic formula by which the 
apothecary compounded them ? It is an old maxim, 
that a lawyer wlio pleads his own cause, has a fool for 



52 SERMONS. 

a client, and that a doctor should never become his 
own patient — so great is our likelihood of error in our 
judgments concerning ourselves; and therefore so great 
the danger of killing, where we have the very best in- 
tent to cure. I attended — but this very last week — 
the funeral of a man of medical science, who was said 
to have come to his end by mistaking his disease, and 
prescribing the wrong thing to himself. But if men of 
science endanger their lives by presuming to become a 
law unto themselves, how wickedly absurd it must be 
for you who make no pretence to any of their knowl- 
edge, thus to take your life into your own hands ! And 
how clearly the revelation of your physician becomes 
no revelation at all, in that moment when you nullify 
it, by tlu'owing away perhaps its vitalest part, because 
it does not seem reasonable to your ignorance. If you 
have no confidence in the physician, do not employ him. 
If you have confidence, have all confidence in him, and 
give him a fair chance to save your life, by allowing his 
skill to do its perfect work. And so if you see ground 
for reasonable confidence in the Great Physician of souls, 
take his revelation in its integrity, as he gives it to you — 
and do not make it of none effect through your tradition. 
Do you urge ; I am willing to receive as authorita- 
tive, what seems to me authentic, and I claim, there- 
fore, to do no violence to the divine authority of reve- 
lation, by throwing out what appears to me unreasona- 
ble in it ? I answer, either God intended that we should 
take all the Bible as an authoritative revelation to 
guide our life, or he did not. If he did so intend, we 
ought so to receive it. If, on the contrary, he wished 
us to receive, as of divine authority, only certain por- 



THE WHOLE BIBLE, OR NONE. 53 

tions of the Bible, he would have given iis a supplemen- 
tary revelation, designating ivhat portions he desires us 
so to receive. Li the absence of such a supplementary 
revelation, it is just the same as if we had no revelation 
at all ; for we can make no use of the Bible unless we 
can take its chapters and verses and model our life by 
them, and we can never tell concerning any particular 
chapter or verse, whether it is inspired, and so are left 
without any guide. 

You wish to commence some chemical business which 
you think can be turned to profit. You purchase, at 
great cost, a manual, giving minutely those processes 
for the laboratory, in the exact following of which you 
expect to reach your desired result. After you have 
made all your preparations, and just as you are about 
to commence your manufacture, you become informed 
that only a part of that manual is authentic ; that, scat- 
tered through it, are a great many blunders, not merely, 
but false receipts which would lead you to a total waste 
of time and material. You indignantly write to its 
author to know what he means by publishing such a 
book, and asking him to furnish you with an exact list 
of all the false and defective portions, in order that 
you may waste neither time nor money over them. He 
replies by tilling you to use your own discretion ! Now, 
you may have any amount of discretion concerning that 
which comes within the scope of your information, but 
you feel that it is impossible for sheer ignorance to ex- 
ercise discretion, and so you throw away the book as no 
revelation at all ; ))ccause you cannot get a supple- 
mentary revelation, to discriminate authoritatively be- 
tween the truth and falsehood of the first. 

5* 



54 SERMONS. 

Just SO we are situated in regard to the Bible, if it 
has uninsj3ired portions, and we are left without a sup- 
plementary revelation to tell us where they are. So 
that if it is only a semi-revelation, it is no revelation at 
all — and therefore it is a mockery, nay, a cruelty, im- 
possible to come from the infinitely loving God. 

Here, then, right Reason takes her stand. This is 
her voice : the whole Bible or no Bible I She can dis- 
cover no need of rejecting any chapter, verse, or Hne, 
on account of their contents, because any thing at first 
inexplicable in them can be better explained in an- 
other manner ; she is driven to conclude that all that 
vast mass of evidence which goes to establish the in- 
spiration of the Holy Scriptures in general, must equal- 
ly establish the force of their every part ; while every 
principle of common sense forces her toward the con- 
viction that any theory of semi-revelation applied to the 
Bible, must be fatal to all its claims to be a revelation 
at all. So that, from whatever side she approaches the 
subject, and in whatever aspect she regards it, she 
reaches the conclusion of both David and Solomon : 
'' Thy testimonies are very sure," '^ Every word of God 
is pure ; " and makes up at last her verdict in the very 
language which the beloved disciple recorded, to stand 
everlasting sentinel on the last page of the holy book : — 
'' If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add 
unto liim the plagues that are written in this book; and 
if any man shall take away from the words of the book 
of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the 
book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the 
tliinn's which are written in this book." 



III. 

REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT* 



ACTS YIII: 22. 
REPENT, THEREFORE, OF THIS THY WICKEDNESS, AND PRAT GOD, 
IP PERHAPS THE THOUGHT OF THINE HEART MAY BE FORGIVEN 
THEE. 

One of the gTeatest obstacles which is encountered in 
the endeavor to persuade men to obey the precepts of 
evangelic truth, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
unto salvation, is found in the wide-spread feeling that 
simple regret for sin will secure its forgiveness. It is 
undoubtedly true, as a general rule, that when a 
child has done v/rong, and becomes sincerely sorry for 
that wrong, he is, and ought to be, forgiven by his par- 
ent. And, laying hold of this conceded principle, men 
argue, since God is our Heavenly Father, and has a 
heart infinitely kind, that the same rule will hold be- 
tween Him and us, and that, if any man is really sorry 
for his sms, God will, for that sorrow merely, forgive 
him. So that when you draw near to such men, and 
urge them to repent and believe in Christ, and do works 
meet for repentance, and tell them that they are in 

* Pine Street Church, November 23d, 1856. 

(55) 



56 SERMONS. 

danger of eternal condemnation if they do not do this ; 
they reply : does not the earthly Father forgive his 
child when he is sorry for his sin ; and is not God infi- 
nitely more inclined to give good gifts to us, than 
earthly parents are to give them to their children ? 
They will very likely say that they are sorry that they 
have done wrong ; that they have always regretted their 
errors ; that they have ever sought to make restitution 
if they have injured anybody ; that, if you can convince 
them now that they have done such an injury, which 
is unrepaired, they will go, at once, and make it their 
first business to rectify the evil. Thus they feel as if 
they had squared their accounts as they have gone 
along — year by year, and day by day — and, remem- 
bering that Jehovah himself has said that he is '' very 
pitiful and of tender mercy " they entertain no fears for 
the future. They do not feel the force of your argu- 
ments — do not yield themselves to your appeals. 

I have no doubt many such men are honest in their 
convictions, and really believe that there is no need of 
their doing any thing more than they have done, to se- 
cure the divine favor. I have no doubt that there are 
individuals here this morning, who, with entire sincerity 
hold that their mere repentance — without any thing 
more — will be accepted by God, and will secure the 
pardon of sin. 

I desire to treat all such honest belief with entire re- 
spect ; to hold fair discussion with it ; to concede to it 
every possible argument to which it has a right, and 
to invite and urge it to desert its ground, and come 
over to the position which I hold, only when it shall 
have become reasonably convinced that its creed is 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. bi 

fuiidameiitallv erroneous, and that the truth is on 
my side. 

You beheve that simple sorrow for sin will secure its 
pardon from the merciful and paternal God. 

I believe that sincere sorrow for sin is just as neces- 
sary as you do ; but that it is not, of itself, sufficient to 
secure pardon, and that, in addition to this, one must 
" beheve on the Lord Jesus Christ unto salvation." 

Let us reason together. 

I. I urge that the argument of analogy on which you 
ground your faith that sincere sorrow for sin is, of itself 
sufficient, is imperfect. 

The analogy is that of a parent and his child, and 
the argument, if reduced to its particulars, would be 
this : — 

1. Earthly parents forgive their children when they 
have sufficient evidence that they are sorry for their sin. 

2. God is a parent. 

3. Therefore God will forgive his children when he 
sees that they are sincerely sorry for their sin. 

But here is a palpable flaw in the reasoning. In 
order to make the argument good, you ought to be able 
to make it read thus : — 

1. Earthly parents forgive their children on simple 
repentance. 

2. God is an earthly parent; that is: will act on 
precisely the same principles as earthly parents do. 

3. Therefore God will forgive his children on simple 
repentance. You must be able, in other words, to 
show that the relation of God to his creatures, is so 
far identical with that of the earthly parent to his child, 
that what holds good of one, will necessarily hold good 



5<S SERMONS. 

of the other. To say this, is impossible. You do not 
know it. You cannot prove it from natural religion. 
And if you go to the Bible for proof, you must take all 
which it says, as true ; and that will overturn it. 

But if you could say it — if you had reasonable and 
sufficient evidence that the relation between God and 
his creatures is so exactly identical with that subsistmg 
between us and our children, as to make it safe to rea- 
son from one to the other — I think it may be shown 
that this very principle would turn itself against you 
with unanswerable force. The argument would be 
this : — 

1. Granted that the relation between God and his 
creatures is so far analogous to that between earthly 
parents and their children, that the same principles 
which govern the pardon of offences in the one case, 
will apply to the other. 

2. But, in certain cases, earthly parents do not and 
cannot forgive on repentance merely. 

3. Therefore, in like cases, God cannot and will not 
forgive upon repentance merely. 

Now, I have only to show that the ordinary relation 
of the sinner to his Maker, is of this exceptional charac- 
ter, so that in like cases, an earthly parent would not 
forgive his child simply on the ground of sorrow for his 
sin, and I have turned your own reasoning fatally 
against you. I say, then : — 

1. Whenever the simple relation of parent and child 
is complicated with another relation which introduces 
principles that would make it inexpedient and improper 
to allow the ordinary laws of the parental relation to 
take their course, then earthly parents do not forgive 



{ 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 59 

their children simply because they are sorry for their 
sin. Let me illustrate this : — 

Zaleucus was the first ruler of the Greeks who gave 
them a code of written laws. One of those laws decreed 
the putting out of the two eyes, as the punishment for 
a certain offence. Xot long afterward his own son com- 
mitted that offence. Now, as a father, simply, he could 
have forgiven his son on the ground of sincere penitence. 
But, as a magistrate, he had no such authority. To 
forgive his son simply for his penitence, looked at from 
his position as a ruler, would be to say to his subjects : 
that law is unjust and ought not to be executed ; be- 
cause if it is just and ought to be executed, it ought to 
be executed upon his own son, as much as upon the son 
of any other citizen. The parental, became, at once, so 
complicated with the governmental relation, that its ordi- 
nary laws would not apply. Zaleucus solved the prob- 
lem thus presented, by putting out one of his son's eyes, 
and one of his own, that the law might have its two 
eyes as a testimony to its justice and majesty, and that 
his poor son might not be made totally blind. 

Suppose some President of the United States to be so 
unfortunate as to have a son who should crown a long 
career of profligacy by becoming a pirate upon the high 
seas. Suppose him to be taken captive by one of our 
vessels of war, in the very act of sacking a defenceless 
ship, and murdering her passengers for their gold. He 
is brought home, tried, and condemned to death. As a 
father, the President might forgive him when reasonably 
convinced that he was truly penitent. But could lie 
rightly do so as President of the United States? AVould 
not the whole nation feel as if the majesty of law had 



CO SERMONS. 

suffered sacrilegej if the miscreant should escape the 
punishment of his crimes simply because of a relation- 
ship which, in reality, aggravates the offence, by in- 
creasing the hight of intelligence and privilege from 
which he fell ? 

Plainly, then, when the parental is thus complicated 
^vith the governmental relation, earthly parents cannot, 
and ought not, to forgive their children merely because 
they are sorry for their sin. 

2. But the parental relation of God to his human 
creatures is, in all cases^ complicated by the existence 
of a governmental relation almost precisely identical 
with that which I have just illustrated. God is the 
ruler of the universe. He has promulgated a law which 
every one of his children is most solemnly bound to 
obey. Severe, yet just penalties, overhang all trans- 
gression of it. And every sin which calls for penitence, 
is a sin because it is a transgression of that law, and for 
no other reason. He is grieved as a father, because he 
is disobeyed as a ruler. When, then, one of his chil- 
dren comes to him confessing and repenting of a long 
catalogue of wrong doings, it is also a rebellious subject 
of his government, standing before his tribunal and 
pleading guilty to a series of transgressions against his 
just and necessary law. 

Zaleucus could not forgive the adulterer simply be- 
cause he was his son, without trampling his own stat- 
utes under foot. The President could not forgive the 
pirate, simply because he was his son, on repentance 
alone. kSo neither can God the Judge — if his conduct 
is analogous to that of earthly parents — forgive his 
cliildren their offences, on repentance alone, because 






REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 61 

every one of those offences is an act of disobedience 
to his law ; compHcating, of necessity, his position as a 
father, with his position as a ruler. 

3. It would follow, therefore, even if it were true 
that there is such an analogy between the relation of 
God and man, and that of parent and child, as to make 
it safe to reason on the supposition that the laws of for- 
giveness which apply to the one case, will hold good in 
the other ; that God cannot forgive men simply when, 
and because, they are sorry for their sins, because earthly 
parents do not, and cannot, forgive their children for 
repentance alone, when they are situated toward them 
in circumstances analogous to those which exist in the 
ordinary relations between the Creator and his crea- 
tures. 

If, then, as I have shown, there is really no sufficient 
evidence that there is such analogy between the rela- 
tion of God to man, and the relation of parent to child, 
as to make it safe to say that what is true in the one 
case, will be true in the other ; and if it be true further, 
as I have also shown, that such analogy, did it exist, 
would render it certain that God could not forgive on 
repentance merely, because the parent never forgives 
his child on repentance merely, when he is situated 
toward him as God is always situated toward all his 
human creatures ; it must follow that this attempted 
demonstration from the analogy of the parental relation 
of the sufficiency of repentance alone to secure the par- 
don of sin, is, in every form, and every sense, a failure. 
It leaves the question just where it found it — to be 
decided upon other grounds. 

II. I remark^ in the second place, that as you cannot 

6 



62 SERMONS. 

log-icalh/ defend your theory that simple sorroiv for sin 
15, of itself sufficient to secure forgiveness^ from the 
analogy of the parental relation^ so you cannot defend it 
by the argument that it seems reasonable to yourself that 
it should be so. 

Of course you will not understand that I ask you to 
believe any thing on this subject or any other, that does 
not seem reasonable to yourselves. That is not the 
question now at issue. The question is, is a thing 
necessarily true, because it seems reasonable to us that 
it should be true ? 

That there is no absolute certainty involved in the 
fact that forgiveness for repentance merely, seems rear 
sona1)le to a man, becomes clear the moment it is re- 
membered that the same argument, if good, in one case, 
to establish this proposition, is just as good, in another, 
to establish its opposite. You believe it, because it 
seems reasonable to you. I believe its opposite, for the 
same reason. Both cannot be true. My certainty is 
as good as yours, and neither is good for any thing, 
against, or in the absence of, other e\ddence. 

But your own reason will endorse the assertion, 
the moment it is clearly comprehended, that the con- 
ditions of human forgiveness, and all questions of what 
is reasonable and proper in regard to that matter, rest 
with God, and not with us, for decision. 

Nothing is more clear than that when your neighbor 
has wronged you, by the very act he puts the power of 
prescril)ing the conditions on which you will be recon- 
ciled again, into your hand. You can best judge how 
great is the injury. You see relations of it which he 
cannot see. And you feel that it is your place to pre- 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 63 

scribe to him the conditions on which a reconcihation 
mav take phice between von. Evervbodv's common 
sense assents to this. And. in so doing, it settles the 
question that, since we are the offenders, it is for God 
to prescribe the conditions on which he will forgive us. 
He knows best the actual wrong that has been done. 
He can see all the wide-spread and eternal relations of 
the subject. And if he savs that he can and will for- 
give us on repentance alone, that settles the matter. 
K he says that repentance is not enough, that settles it. 
The reasonableness, in our eyes, of any other course 
than that which he prescribes, caimot make it his 
course : cannot make it truth. Because it is common 
sense that he, the offended one, and not we, the offend- 
ers, should prescribe conditions of peace between us. 

I Insist, then, that neither fi^om any assumed analogy 
growing out of the parental relation, nor from any 
assumed reasonableness to your own mind, are you 
authorized to infer that God will, as a matter of fact, 
forgive sin, on the ground of repentance alone. 

III. It is icorthy of notice here, that there seems to 
be something in the nature of man ichich demands more 
than simple repentance, before it can feel at rest about 
the forgiveness of its sins. 

If such a feeling exists, God planted it in the human 
breast, and we may look upon it as — in an important 
sense — a witness from him. I know that some of the 
old moralists considered repentance as sufficient. Sen- 
eca said — quern pcenitet peccasse pene est innocens — 
he who has repented is almost innocent. Yet we have, 
on the other hand, the eaidy and almost universal cus- 
tom of sacrifices for sin, to testify that men. unenlight- 



04 SERMONS. 

ened by revelation, did not feel safe in sorrow for sin 
alone, but felt a desire, in some way, to propitiate the 
offended Deity, and make expiation for their guilt. 
And the feeling, to this day, is almost universal, in the 
minds of thoughtful men, that something more than 
penitence is necessary for acceptance with God. Grant 
that penitence is sincere, it cannot undo the wrong 
that has been done ; it cannot restore the soul's inward 
purity, debauched by sin ; it will be at best, fitful and 
defective, and will hardly, even to its own hope, entirely 
cover the future ground of life, while it must leave the 
soul in painful uncertainty with respect to the offences 
of youth and riper years, long since gone by ; even 
lapsed from memory, in many instances, and so, sUd 
])eyond the restorative power of penitence — for how 
can a man confess and repent of a sin which he has for- 
gotten ? 

If you say that there is no force in this argument, 
because you are not conscious of this alleged demand 
in human nature for something beyond penitence as 
the condition of peace, I reply : you may not have any 
consciousness of it now ; you may never have had such 
consciousness ; but you have no security that you never 
will have it. Many a man has lived long years without 
it, to find it burst forth in terrible majesty from the con- 
cealed depths of his soul, in the hour of trial, and sick- 
ness, and dissolution. Not till your limbs are folded 
in the cold calmness of death, and your last experi- 
ence of earth has traced itself upon the tablets of 
memory, and been recorded on high, can you say with 
certahity, that you are a stranger to this feeling. But 
if it comes suddenly upon your last hour, it may come 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 65 

too late for any thing except the embitterment of your 
departure ! 

Is it not worth your while to consider that thousands 
on thousands of men who have lived and died Chris- 
tians — even m the eye of the sternest critic, honest in 
their faith, and beautiful in the graces of their benevo- 
lent and heroic life — have not only felt that repentance 
alone could not secure their pardon, but that repentance 
alone did not secure it ? It is a matter of experience 
with them. And on no point of their experience are 
they clearer and more emphatic than this. But let us 
pass : — 

lY. In the fourth place ^ to an examination of the tes- 
timony of God himself^ as found in His Holy Word. 

We remember that since he is the offended one. and 
we are the offenders, it rightly rests with him to dictate 
the conditions on which he will restore us to his favor. 
Those conditions the Bible sets forth. 

1. It says that Chiist was manifested to take away 
our sins. " The Son of man is come to save that which 
was lost." " Be it known unto you, men and brethren, 
that through this man is preached unto you the forgive- 
ness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified," 
etc. '' The Son of man came to give his life a ransom 
for many." " When we were without strength, in due 
time Christ died for the ungodly." '• God commencleth 
his love for us m that, while we were yet sinners, Christ 
died for the ungodly." '^ Clnist was once offered to 
bear the sins of many." '• Who his own self bare our 
sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead 
to sins, should live unto righteousness ; by whose stripes 
ye are healed." "For Christ also hath once suffered 

6* 



CG SERMONS. 

for sins — the just for the unjust — that he might bring 
us to God." " The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, 
cleanseth us from all sin." 

Now all these passages, and scores of others, which it 
is needless to quote, unequivocally assert that the ob- 
ject of Christ's mission to earth, and of his death on 
Calvary, was to facilitate the pardon of human guilt. 
But if repentance alone is a sufficient ground of forgive- 
ness, he came to no purpose ; because the power of 
repentance is a prerogative of the human mind — in- 
volved in the very existence of the power to sin — and 
men had that power just as really and just as fully be- 
fore he came, and without any reference to his coming, 
as they have it now. Paul told the Galatians that " if 
righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in 
vain ; " which is the same as to say that, if under the 
law it were possible for men to be saved, Christ's com- 
ing was useless. Much more would it be useless, if he 
who has offended that law, has it in his power, at any 
moment, by simple sorrow for his sin, to restore himself 
to the divine favor. All those passages, then, which set 
forth Christ and his cross as having any thing to do 
with human salvation, are so many denials that repent- 
ance alone can be the ground of pardon. 

2. Examine further God's announcement of the con- 
ditions of salvation. And here we need to remember, 
that, as repentance is agreed on all hands to be one of 
those conditions, we must expect to find many texts 
exhorting to that alone, without any statement in imme- 
diate connection that it is not enough ; for the Gospel 
sometimes concentrates its ajDpeal upon one duty, and 
sometimes upon another. Those texts I shall not 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 67 

quote, because we are agreed that they are m the Xew 
Testament, and are binding on us. The real question 
is, does the Bible ever make any thing besides repent- 
ance, a condition of salvation. Take these passages in 
answer : — 

Paul, in oivino', at Miletus, a summarv of the ministrv 
which he had exercised amono: the churches, savs : '• I 
kept back nothing that was profitable to you, but have 
showed you, and have taught you publicly, and from 
house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to 
the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith in our 
Lord Jesus Christ." ''If thou shalt confess with thv 
mouth, the Lord Jesus, and shalt beheve in thine heart 
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be 
saved." '' God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should 
not perish, but have everlasting life," He that believ- 
eth on the Son, hath everlasting life ; and he that be- 
lieveth not the Son, shall not see life ; but the wrath of 
God abideth on him." " Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and thou shalt be saved." '' Through his name, 
whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of 
sins." '' By him, all that believe are justified from all 
things from which ye could not be justified by the law 
of Moses." '' I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, 
for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believeth." I add one more passage only. It is 
Paul's condemnation of the Jews for depending upon 
repentance alone. '' I bear them record that they have 
a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge ; for they 
being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about 
to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted 



68 SERMONS. 

themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ 
is the end of the law for righteousness, to every one that 
believeth." 

These Scriptures seem to me to teach three things, 
beyond denial : — 

1. That sinners mav be foraiven. 

2. That they must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
in order to be forgiven. 

3. That whatever else they may do, if they do not 
believe on the Lord Jesus, they cannot be forgiven. 

This being true, no further argument is needed to 
prove that repentance without such behef, is insufficient 
and void. 

Into the reason of this divine provision of a cross and 
one hano-ino: on it, and demand that, in addition to re- 
penting of his sin, the sinner should believe in Christ, 
we do not need to go in detail here. I have already 
hinted at it, in saymg that God's relation to us as a 
parent, is so complicated with his relation to us as a 
moral governor, that it is impossible for him to forgive 
upon simple repentance, without making void his law. 
Just here, the Xew Testament teaches us, the sacrifice 
of Christ comes m " to mao'nifv the law and make it 
honorable," for '^ what the law could not do in that it 
was weak, God sending his own Son in the likeness of 
sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," 
so tliat there is therefore now " no condemnation to 
them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the 
flesh, but after the spirit." 

Here I rest my argument. I have endeavored to 
prove to you : — 

1. That because God is our Heavenly Father, you 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 09 

cannot thence argaie that he will forgive us on simple 
repentance, because the analogy between the fatherhood 
of God, and that of man, is too imperfect to bear the 
weight of such an argument, and because, even if that 
analogy should hold, it would not prove this point, in- 
asmuch as earthly parents never forgive their children 
on the simple ground of sorrow for sin, when the paren- 
tal, is complicated with the govern^nental relation, as it 
is in every instance between God and man. 

2. I have sought to prove that the reasonableness of 
forgiveness on repentance merely — in your own esti- 
mation — is not an argument sufficient to establish it 
as a fact, because it is opposed by an opposite conviction 
in the minds of other men, and because since we are 
the offenders, and God the offended party, it does not 
justly belong to our reason, but to His, to fix the terms 
of reconciliation between us. 

3. I have argued that there is, in the human mind, 
or rather in the human conscience, an innate feeling 
which demands something more than repentance, and 
refuses to rely on that alone for a comfortable assurance 
of acceptance with God, and that this feeling is a witness 
of the truth, placed within us by our Creator to incline 
us to that course which our safety demands. 

4. I have urged the direct testimony of God's word. 
I have shown you that, by many voices, the Gospel as- 
serts that Christ was manifested to take away our sins, 
while that manifestation would have been superfluous 
and inexplicable, if simple sorrow for sin would restore 
us to God. And, finally, I have shown you that the 
terms of salvation — distinctly announced by Cluist and 
his Apostles, foreshadowed in the Old Testament, and 



70 SERMONS. 

iterated and reiterated from the first page of Matthew's 
Gospel to the last paragraph of the Apocalypse, demand 
repentance indeed, but repentance and faith, repentance 
and belief in Christ, repentance and the renunciation of 
all dependence on ourselves, coupled with childlike 
trust in the mercy of God, through Christ, and for 
Christ's sake. 

What, now, is the practical issue of all this, but that 
I should say to you, and each one of you, in the words 
of our text : — " Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, 
and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart 
may be forgiven thee." 

If perhaps ! It is not certain^ if you do repent, that 
God will forgive you ; — that is : you must repent in his 
way, and on his conditions ; to the acknowledging of 
the truth, and the performance of it ; believing on the 
Lord Jesus Christ unto salvation. 

You cannot be saved without repentance. You can- 
not be saved with it, without faith in Christ and obedi- 
ence : '' for there is none other name under heaven 
given among men, whereby we must be saved — neither 
is there salvation in any other." 

Take care how you trust to your impressions more 
than God's plain commands ! It is not safe! 

There was once a father who lived, with a sweet fam- 
ily of children, upon the bank of a broad river. In 
summer time it was so shallow that they could wade 
across, by help of stepping stones in the deepest part. 
The bridge was a long way above. One morning the 
father sent his two oldest boys, of the ages of ten and 
twelve years, across on an errand to a distant neighbor's, 
with leave to spend the day. About noon the river be- 



REPENTANCE ALONE INSUFFICIENT. 71 

gan to rise. There had been a terrible thunder-storm 
a few miles above, and the rain made a freshet. He 
thought, at once, of his boys. It had not rained there, 
and they would have no warning. It was too late for 
him to go round over the bridge to meet them. He 
had no boat. He did not know how to swim. So he 
sat down on the bank, with an anxious heart, and 
strained his eyes to catch their advancing forms. Just 
at dark, he saw them, hand in hand, coming cheerily 
along. He shouted at the top of his voice. The river 
roared. He shouted again. The river roared. He could 
see them wading in, all unconscious, into the still water 
near the shore. Almost frantic with alarm, he shouted 
again: — -'Go round by the bridge — it isn't safe to 
wade across I " They heard him then. But they did 
not know there had been a freshet. All was still where 
they were. They were already a quarter of the way 
across. It was long and dark to go round. They 
thought their father was over-careful, and they would 
show him that they were braver than he thought. So 
they kept on. The roar of the river drowned their 
shrieks. The agonized father found their bodies next 
day, stranded miles below. 

Fellow sinner, take care ; God says simple repent- 
ance is not safe. Go round by the bridge which he 
has built. '^ Beheve on the Lord Jesus Chiist and you 
shall be saved." 



lY. 

THE WAY OF SALVATION* 



JOB XXIII: 2, 3 

EVEN TO-DAY IS MY COMPLAINT BITTEH ; MY STROKIE IS HEAVIER 
THAN MY GROANrNG. OH, THAT I KNEW WHERE I MIGHT FIND 
HIM ! THAT I MIGHT COME EVEN TO HIS SEAT ! 

This cry out of the depths of a troubled heart, sug- 
gests an affecting picture. Away in the Arabian desert 
we see an old man ; disappointed, afflicted, diseased — 
with rent mantle and shaven head ; sitting in the dust, 
in grief so great, that the friends who have come to 
mourn with him, and to comfort him, forget the poor 
words they had pondered, and can only lift up their 
voices and weep. At length the pent-up flood within 
him forces a passage through the lips, and, in his agony, 
he opens his mouth and begs God to let the day perish 
wherein he was born. Then follow words — of sympa- 
thy, of counsel, of reproof of what they thought was 
wrong in his spirit — from Ms friends. They assume 
that his trouble is the consequence of his sin. They 
urge him, therefore, to repent, saying : '' acquaint now 
tliyself with Him, and be at peace, thereby good shall 



-*■ Pine Street Church, May 9th, 1858. 
(72) 



THE WAY OF SALTATION. 73 

come unto thee." " Then answered Job, and said, even 
to-day is mv complaint bitter ; my stroke is heavier 
than my groaning," — what I suffer under the hand of 
God, is more than I can express in speech or sound — 
" Oh that I knew where I might find him ! that I might 
come even to his seat I " 

I suppose that there are some here present who can 
enter — more or less Tividly — into sympathy with these 
utterances of the smitten patriarch ; who have been so 
led, by the Spirit of God, to see the depravity of their 
hearts, and the ingratitude, rebelhon, and wickedness of 
their lives, that they can say ' even to-day is my com- 
plaint bitter ; my stroke is heavier than even my groan- 
mg can express ; ' and who may have been gTaciously 
prepared so to long for the deliverance which is of 
God through Christ, that they can also add, with genu- 
ine sincerity, ' Oh, that / knew where I might find him, 
that /might come even to his seat.' If there is one such 
burdened, grieving heart in this assembly ; which is sick 
of itself ; which is appalled at itself; which longs to be 
delivered from the body of its death ; which is seeking 
Christ, if haply it may feel after him and find him, 
yet which gropeth at noonday in its search as the bluid 
gropeth in darkness, and has not prospered in the way ; 
if there is one such person here this morning, I say : 
dear fellow-sinner, will you let me take you by the hand, 
and here, and now, will you let me show you how you 
may find him, and lead you to his seat ? Are you wil- 
ling- to go to him ; willing to become a Christian, to-day, 
if you can only clearly see the way to the cross ? Lis- 
ten, then, and as God shall help me, I will try, as sim- 
l)ly and as practically as possible, to explain to you the 

i 



74 SERMONS. 

successive steps in the way of salvation. God be thanked 
that they are so few, so simple ! 

Salvation ! — The word itself implies, what your own 
convicted consciousness asserts, that the work which 
you need to have done in your heart, is a work of de- 
liverance from danger. This danger grows out of the 
three-fold fact — that you are a sinner ; that you are a 
sinner condemned and lost ; and that neither your own, 
nor any human power can save you. The first step in 
the way of salvation is humbly, heartily, without any 
mental reservation or qualification, to believe this. 

I. Believe that you are a sinner. 

Believe this, not in an abstract and general way, 
as a proposition which, in some sense, cannot be denied 
by one who does not claim perfection ; but believe it in 
that broadest, deepest, most entire and most specific 
sense which makes it apply to every moment of life, 
every thought of the intellect, every emotion of the 
sensibility, every volition of the will, every fact of the 
humanity : which shall make you feel that the whole 
head is sick, and the whole heart faint, that from the 
sole of the foot even unto the head there is no moral 
soundness in you, but only spiritual wounds, and bruises, 
and putrifying sores, prompting you — like the poor 
leper in whom the plague was — to rend your clothes 
and cry " unclean, unclean ! " Without the least ex- 
aggeration, is it not so? The Apostle says that sin 
is the transgression of the law, which law hath domin- 
ion over a man as long as he liveth. And Christ says 
that the law is: thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mmd, and with all thy strength, and thou shalt love 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 75 

thy neighbor as thyself. That is a law neither arbitrary 
nor severe, but just, holy, good ; beautiful in its adap- 
tation to man as a creature ; one which, if obeyed, 
would make him perfectly happy in God, and in his 
fellow-men ; perfectly happy on earth waiting for 
heaven ; perfectly happy in heaven, as the reward and 
crown of earth ! 

' Love God with all the heart, soul, mind, strength ; 
with all the faculties, and in respect to every moment, 
and every act ! ' You have not done this I You never 
did it. You have seldom thought of God, at all. You 
have always loved yourself better than you have loved 
Him. Your daily petition for light and guidance — 
uttered with the life, rather than the lips — has been 
not ' Father ! Dear Father ! what wilt thou have me to 
do, to-day ? ' but ' what shall I eat and drink, and 
wherewithal shall I be clothed ? ' 

'Love thy neighbor as thyself!' You have not done 
this! 'As thyself!' Never! Your selfish heart has 
sometimes planned advantage for itself, from the mis- 
fortune of others ; has often said : ' Look out for num- 
ber one ; ' ' Business is business ; ' 'Do as others do, 
and you do well enough ; ' 'In this world, every man 
must look out for himself.' This is the way you have 
kept that law. 

Yes. I challenge you, this morning, to remember 
one single act, thought, emotion of your past life, that 
will bear the severe, yet benevolent and righteous, test 
of this gi^eat law. Single out any that you recall. It was 
one of conscious hostility to Jehovah, or of unconscious 
neglect of him. If you did not hate him, you forgot him. 
If you did not forget him, you misconceived him. You 



76 SERMONS. 

may have fancied that you loved him, when you dimly 
discerned him in the dusky radiance of the starry night ; 
or when you faintly heard him in the thunder of the 
cataract, or the chime of summer insect, and the carol 
of summer bird, or the mournful murmur of the au- 
tumnal breeze. But that love had no power over your 
life ; it did not make you cease from sin ; it was not 
intelligently fastened upon any thing real in his charac- 
ter ; it was not really love, — such love as you demand 
from your child ; such as you, God's child, have been, 
every moment, bound to render unto him. And as you 
have thus utterly and always failed to love God accord- 
ing to the command, so you have failed to love man 
according to it. Selfishness, and not benevolence, has 
been the inward, central, controlling law of all your 
life. If you do not see it, it is because it has blinded 
your eyes. You are corrupt. You have done abomi- 
nable works. The Lord has looked down from heaven 
upon you, to see if you did any good ; if in any thing 
you did understand and seek him ; and has been com- 
pelled to the mournful record : — 'he is altogether be- 
come filthy ; he is become unprofitable ; he knows not 
the way of peace ; there is no fear of God before his 
eyes ; there is no thing in which he is righteous, no, not 
one ; therefore, by the deeds of the law, he cannot be 
justified in my sight ! ' 

I do not say that you are a recognized and notorious 
offender in the sight of man ; a felon, a murderer, a 
pirate ! I do not say that you are worse than others ! 
I do not say that there are not in you many sweet 
thoughts and gentle affections — ivy vines climbing over 
and binding together the ruins of your moral nature ; — 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 77 

I do not say that in social qualities, and charitable acts, 
you may not have preeminence even over some others 
of harder nature, in whose hearts is kindled the begin- 
ning of the fire of Christian love, — not blazing high 
enough yet to shine out at the windows of the soul, with 
serene and steady glow I But I do say, that because 
you have never yet kept God's law ; never yet done as 
well as you knew how to do, in any one moment of life ; 
you have been in all moments of your life, a sinner 
against Him. 

Believe this ! Do not question it ! Do not resist it ! 
for " all have sinned and come short of the glory of 
God ; " and the belief of this is the first step in the way 
of salvation ; for '' the Scripture hath concluded all 
under sin, that the promise by faith, of Jesus Christ, 
might be given to them that believe." 

II. Believe that you are a sinner condemned^ and lost. 

Having never kept the law, it is inevitable that you 
should be under its condemnation. It is just that you 
should be. Since it has always been as much for your 
good, as for that of God, and your fellows, that you 
have been commanded to love Him best, and them 
equally with yourself; you can allege nothing why sen- 
tence of death should not issue against j^ou, and take 
effect upon you. Your sin has been of your own choice. 
You had no need to do it ; for however weak your 
nature was, God has always stood by your side offering 
his help to you, if you would endeavor to obey him. 
He has waited to be gracious unto you.. Many and many 
a time, his Spirit has besought you to cease to do evil, 
and learn to do well. But, with senses deafened and 
blinded to all his patient and persistent urgencies, 

7* 



78 SERMONS. 

you have trodden the path of the transgressor. Hear 
now what God says concerning you : — ''He that be- 
lieveth not is condemned ah^eady, because he hath not 
bcHeved in the name of the only begotten Son of God." 
" Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things 
which are written in the book of the law, to do them." 
" The soul that sinneth it shall die." " He that, being 
often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be 
destroyed, and that without remedy." This is just 
what you have done. Could anybody describe your 
state more accurately ? You have forgotten God ! 
You are condemned ! You are lost ! It is a terrible 
thought, but is it not a just one, that, if God should 
call you into eternity, as you are sitting here, you must 
be forever lost? You have had an opportunity to 
choose ; and you have chosen to sin ; and " the wages 
of sin is death!" Believe this — appalling as it is! Be- 
lieve it ; — such belief is a step in the way of your sal- 
vation — for ''the Son of man is come to seek and to 
save that which was lost ! " 

HI. Believe that you cannot save yourself^ and that 
no created arm can save you. 

You cannot save yourself. Try it. You have tried 
it many a time. You have resolved, and re-resolved, 
and sinned the same. You are just like the poor drunk- 
ard who has nourished his one appetite within him, until 
it has overmastered thought, feeling, and even volition ; 
and drags resistless what is left of his poor manhood, 
captive at its chariot wheels. I doubt if there is one in 
this audience, who really thinks he has power, of him- 
self, to rescue himself from the condemnation of tlie 
divine law. Think of it ! That law will cover every 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 79 

moment till the end of life, and will compel every 
thought, feeling, act, to be perfect, or it cannot be satis- 
fied. And can you hope to do tliis ? — Is there the 
shghtest possibility that you can work such a reforma- 
tion in yourself as to change, at once, the whole current 
of your soul, and compel every single drop of the broad 
stream to flow toward God, instead of away from him ? 
Xo, no I " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the 
leopard his spots ? Then may ye also do good, that are 
accustomed to do evil! " And — even if vou could do 
this impossible future labor — what is to become of 
your past, — of these long, dreadful years of guilt, loom- 
ing up behind you in all their vast and varied vileness 
— one great aggregation of sins ; sins of all sorts ; need- 
less, ungrateful, inexplicable, abominable sins ? What 
is to become of them ? They, at least, are beyond your 
recall. The murderer may weep bitterest tears, but 
they will not put new life into the stiff limbs of the 
dead. You have murdered — one by one — the days 
that stand between your birth-cry and tliis hour. You 
cannot live over your past ! You cannot change the 
hue and hurt of a single one of your transgressions ! 
Many of them — most of them (solemn thought !) — 
you have forgotten I But God has not ; they are written 
down in his book of remembrance ! Angels may have 
wept as they traced the gloomy history, but even angelic 
tears did not blot them from the record I There they 
are, in all their far and wide-reaching relations of harm. 
You cannot help it ! We cannot help it ! The Church 
cannot help it ! The universe cannot help it ! If every 
created intelligence — of things in heaven, and things 
in earth — were to combine with every other, to plead 



80 SERMONS. 

with God that the least one of all those iniquities should 
be emptied of its guilt ; his commandment — the foun- 
dation of the stability of his moral government — would 
still stand sure — ''the soul that sinneth, it shall die^ — 
if thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, but if 
thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it! " 

Oh, my brother, my sister impenitent ; you are a sin- 
ner before the Lord exceedingly! You are a con- 
demned sinner, taking courage to sin on, because sen- 
tence against your evil work has not been executed 
speedily! You cannot save yourself! No created arm 
can save you ! You are lost ; justly, though hopelessly 
lost ! This is your danger, from which you need salva- 
tion. Do you really, sadly, humbly, believe it all ? 
God help you to do so, for through this gloom and 
darkness is the way to the better life. 

IV. Hear now this comfortable truth, — the belief in 
ivhich, is the next step in the way — that God, cm cer- 
tain conditions, is willing to save just such condemned, 
lost sinners as you are. 

Here we need no argument, but only to listen to the 
gracious declarations of the Gospel. " God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." "For when we were without strength, 
in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely 
for a righteous man, will one die ; yet peradventure for 
a good man, some would even dare to die. But God 
commendeth his love toward us in that while we were 
yet sinners, Christ died for us." " Herein is love, not 
that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his 
Son to be the propitiation for our sins." "He was 



THE WAY OF SALTATION. 81 

wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our 
iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, 
and with his stripes we are healed. All we, Uke sheep, 
have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own 
way ; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us 
all." " And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanseth 
from all sin.'' " For the Son of man is come to seek 
and to save that which was lost.*' *' Wherefore, also, 
he is able to save them to the uttermost, that come unto 
God by him." 

Here we have — distinct, full, abundant, unmistak- 
able — the assurance that God loves and pities lost 
men ; has taken infinite pains to make their salvation 
possible ; is ready to save all of them, and each of them. 
who will comply with his conditions of pardon. Here, 
fellow-sinner, smiles the rainbow of hope upon the very 
bosom of the dark cloud of your despair I Do you be- 
lieve this — that God is wiUing, and desires to save the 
lost, when they meet the terms of salvation wliich he 
has ordained ? Such belief is the first step out of your 
wretchedness I 

V. The next step is the comprehension of these terms. 

They are two — simple, reasonable, essential. 

(1.) The first is, that you be truly sorry for all your 
past sins ; that you loathe and abhor the sinful habits, 
temper, and disposition of your soul ; and that you both 
earnestlv and honestlv endeavor, henceforth, to be free 
from sin. This is repentance. It is simple, for any 
man — any child — can understand what it is. It is 
reasonable, for you could neither expect, nor ask, God 
to forgive past sins, which you mean forever to repeat : 
and therefore love : and therefore are not reallv sorrv 



82 SERMONS. 

for. It is essential — both, thus, from the obvious na- 
ture of the case, and from the direct commandment of 
God. " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.'- 
" Now God commandeth all men, everywhere, to repent." 
" Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgres- 
sions ; so iniquity shall not be your ruin ; " ''I have no 
pleasure in the death of him that dietli, saith the Lord 
God : wherefore turn yourselves and live ye." 

(2.) The second condition is, that you believe and 
consent to the fact that, if you are penitent God is wil- 
ling to forgive your sins, for Christ's sake, and on ac- 
count of what Christ has done. This is faith in Christ. 
It is simple, for it is just believing that God really 
means what he says. It is reasonable, for the law which 
declares that the soul that sinneth shaU die, and which 
therefore condemns your soul to eternal death for the 
sins which it has committed, cannot be saved from pub- 
lic contempt, and magnified, and made honorable, with- 
out the death of Christ is substituted before it, for your 
own ; and it cannot be so substituted, without consent 
and desire on your part ; which consent and desire, on 
your part, leading to, and growing into, the confident 
assurance that God has actually magnified his law by 
accepting Christ's death in your stead — so that there 
remaineth now no condemnation for you, if you walk 
not after the flesh, but after the spirit — is faith in 
Christ. It is essential, for God says, " Christ is the end 
of the law," (that is, answers the same purpose as obe- 
dience — the natural end — to the law, would have 
done) " to every one that believeth." So God says that 
'' he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believ- 
eth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life." 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 83 

And Jesus said : " this is the will of Him that sent me, 
that every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him, 
may have everlasting life : and I will raise him up at 
the last day." And he said, again : '' he that believeth 
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and who- 
soever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die." 

VI. One step more remains^ and only one^ for I am 
not discussing now all the theology that is involved in 
the sinner^s regeneration^ but^ assuming the theology^ 
am seeking simply to point out the successive things 
vjhich — God doing his part — it is necessary for the 
sinner to do^ in order to be saved. 

It is this. Believing, from the heart, that you are a 
sinner, — a sinner justly condemned, utterly lost, who 
cannot save yourself, and whom no created arm can 
save — and believing that, nevertheless, God is willing 
to save just such a lost sinner as you are, if you repent 
and believe in Christ ; the next, last, croAvning, enter- 
ing step into the kingdom is — believe that all this is 
true of you now : that God will, this moment, as you 
sit where you sit, forgive your sins for Christ's sake, if 
you are penitent ; that — through the exceeding riches 
of his grace — you may rise up and go forth a Chris- 
tian, redeemed by the blood of Jesus unto newness of 
life. Yes ! It is not too good to be true ! He waiteth 
to be gracious ! His promises are not only actual in 
the present tense, but they have no other. They do 
not apply to to-morrow — not one of them ! " Let the 
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his 
thoughts, and let him return [now] unto the Lord, 
and he will [now] have mercy upon him, and to our 
God, for he will [now] abundantly pardon." '' Behold 



84 SERMONS. 

now is the accepted time, behold noiv is the day of 
salvation." '' To-day^ if ye will hear his voice, harden 
not your hearts." 

^ To-morrow, Lord, is thine, 
Lodged in thy Sovereign hand ; 
And if its sun arise and shine, 
'T will shine by thy command ; " — 

But it may not shine on you ; and if it shine on you, 
it may light the stumbling, downward pathway of a 
man who has rejected his last opportunity of salvation, 
and whose doom is sealed forever ! 

Now^ God says to you, and to each one of you, ' re- 
pent, believe, obey ; and your sins shall be blotted out ! ' 

It is unquestionably true, though it may seem harsh 
to some of you for me to say it, that there is only one 
real reason which can keep you, my impenitent friends, 
from submitting to God, and making your peace with 
him through Christ, here, and now. And that reason 
is, that you do really so desire to keep on in sin, that you 
are not yet willing to give it up, even for Christ and 
heaven ! That will be the reason, and the only reason, 
which God will see in any heart that goes away from 
this service unreconciled to Him. Remember it ! Make 
no mistake about it ! Say to yourself, as you go out 
upon the sidewalk : ' I am going home a sinner — just 
as I came — a poor, wretched sinner, in danger of 
eternal death every moment ; and the only reason is, 
because I love to be a sinner ; because, after all, I do 
prefer my sinful meanness, my ingratitude, my rebel- 
lion, my wretchedness, to the holy peace of God which 
passeth all understanding. If I could have brought 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 85 

myself to have giyen up my sweet sins, I might have 
been forgiven, this morning, and gone home a new 
creature in Christ Jesus I ' 

I know some of you will start back from this with 
horror, and say : ' that is not my case ; that is not the 
reason which keeps me from repenting and believing, 
now.' You think so, doubtless ; but you are deceived 
through the deceitfiilness of sin. There is no reason but 
ihat^ which can keep you ! 

Do you say : ' I have not conviction of sin enough now 
— I do not feel as others have felt, before conversion, 
and it is useless for me to attempt to repent until I 
have deeper convictions ? ' I answer : where does God 
tell you that ? God says : behold now is the accepted 
time. The devil says : wait for more conviction. You 
know, at this moment, that you are a sinner; that you 
are lost; that you cannot save yourself; that you need 
Christ to save you. You know, further, that it is your 
duty to turn to God, at this moment ; that you have no 
right to go on in sin another hour ; that if you do, deatli 
may cut you off in the midst of your guilt. And you 
further know, that God is willing to save you for Christ's 
sake, at this moment, if you are willing to be saved. 
And you further know, that God is now leaving it for 
you to decide whether you will be saved now or not ; 
and that if, with such conviction of sin as you have, 
you come to him, he will in no wise cast you out. 
Therefore, if you go out of that door unforgiven, it is 
your own fault, and is not because you have not con- 
viction enough to make salvation possible, but because 
you love to sin too well to stop ! 

Does another say : ' I cannot repent without the aid 

8 



86 SERMONS. 

of the Holy Spirit, for no man can come to Christ ex- 
cept the Father draw him ? ' I answer : true, and there 
is one great danger of waiting, even till to-morrow, — 
because you cannot repent without the Holy Spirit, 
and he may not help you to-morrow. This morning 
he does help you. He brought you here. Why are 
you not, at this instant, at home, in the streets, the 
fields, or anywhere but here ; but because the Holy 
Spirit brought you here to bless you. It is the Spirit, 
through my lips, which now says ' come,' to you. In 
promising, at this moment, to save you if you repent 
and believe, God pledges himself to give you all aid 
from the Holy Spirit, which you may need. Therefore, 
if you go out of that door unforgiven, it will be your 
own fault ; and not because the Holy Spirit would not 
change your heart, but because you love to sin too well 
to stop ! 

Does another say : ' I am too great a sinner ever to be 
saved. There are peculiarities in my case, that make 
it different from that of anybody else, so that I can- 
not feel that there is mercy for me ? ' I answer : thank 
God if you feel so guilty, and thank him more that he 
is able to save to the uttermost them that come to him 
through Christ. Your heart is worse than you think it 
is — but, though your sins be as scarlet, he can make 
them as white as snow ! You cannot be any 7nore than 
lost, and the lost, Christ came to save. And Christ 
now says to you — (dare not to add to your guilt by 
doubting his holy word, and setting up your individual 
selfishness as broader than his infinite sacrifice,) " who- 
soever will, let him take of the water of life freely." 
If you do not take it, and take it as freely as your great 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 87 

need requires, and do it now — if you go out of that 
door unforgiven — it is not because Christ is not willing 
to save you, and willing to save you now, but because 
you love to sin too well to stop ! 

Does another say : ' it seems to me I am willing to re- 
pent and believe, but, somehow, I cannot clearly under- 
stand exactly how to believe in Christ ? ' I answer : 
you misunderstand it because it is so very easy to know. 
You look over it, and around it, for some great thing, 
while it Ues at your feet — simplicity itself. You have 
sinned I You deserve death ! You feel it ! God says : 
' I have found a ransom — you need not die ; Christ 
has died in your stead. If now you will be sorry for 
the past and obedient in the future, and consent that 
the violated law shall be satisfied by his life instead of 
yours, and gratefully devote yourself to his service ever- 
more, you shall be saved.' What is easier than for you 
to say : ' God, I thank thee ! Christ, I love thee ! 
I do consent, in sweet amazement, that it can be so ; 
and let me never, never sin any more ! ' 

But do you say : ' faith — it is so dark, I cannot un- 
derstand what that is ? ' It is just believing that all iSj 
as God says it is. He says he will forgive you for 
Christ's sake, if you repent. And, now if you do repent, 
he does forgive you this moment, and you must believe 
that he does. 

' But how shall I know that he has forgiven me ? ' 
By faith — faith still. If your father should say to 
you : ' my son, if you will learn the French language 
thoroughly, on that day on which you are able to con- 
verse with me in it, with ease and fluency, I will add 
five thousand dollars to the provision which I have 



88 SERMONS. 

made for you in my last will and testament ; ' would 
you not have confidence enough in him to believe 
that, when the day came, and you had passed the or- 
deal to his expressed satisfaction and joy, the promised 
provision was made, though without the evidence of 
sense to you ? 

And when your Heavenly Father says : ' repent, be- 
lieve, and obey, and you shall be forgiven for Christ's 
sake,' have you not confidence enough in him to feel 
sure that the thing which he has promised is performed, 
in that moment when you do your part ? 

' But I shall be deceived, if I imagine I am forgiven 
when I have no evidence that I am, except my own im- 
pression ! ' 

Never fear. You will have other evidence enough, 
the moment you do your duty of submission. 

Here you are, we will suppose, sleeping in an upper 
chamber of your dwelling, when you are suddenly 
aroused by the cry of fire, and the suffocation of smoke. 
You rush to the stairway to find it already impassable 
by the leaping violence of the conflagration. You rush 
to the window, but, as you throw it open, volumes of 
vapor, pressed and crowded on that side by the wind, 
make thick darkness there. 

Hark ! You hear your name shouted, in the accents 
of your dearest friend ! His voice comes out of the 
dense cloud just below your window. He says : ' come 
here — by the light in your room I can see you, though 
you cannot see me ! My ladder is too short and I can- 
not climb any higher, but I am here directly under you, 
and if you will let yourself out of the window down into 
my arms, I will catch you safely, and carry you down.' 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 89 

You cannot see him. But you know his voice. You 
have confidence that he would not advise you wrongly. 
There is no other alternative. You must die, or drop 
thus into the darkness, having faith that he is there and 
will be strong enough, and skillful enough to save you. 

Would you linger ? Would you say : ' this faith, I 
cannot understand it ? This saviour, I cannot see him ? 
How shall I know when I am safe ? ' 

No ! You would leap just at his bidding ; and when 
you felt his strong arms around you, you would know 
that your rescue was secure. 

Just so — leap into the invisible everlasting arms ! 
And when you have let go all hold upon yourself and 
your own righteousness, you will know that you are 
forgiven. 

Try it and see ! It is not obscure. It is the simplest 
thing in this world to believe in Christ. 

Try it and see ! And remember ! if you go out of 
that door unforgiven, it will not really be because of 
any obscurity in the plan of salvation, but it will be 
simply because you love to sin too well to stop ! 

I have done, with just this parting word to each of 
you who are troubled because you are out of Christ. 

Christ calls you now. He will be grieved if you do 
not believe on him now. Here are the simple steps by 
which you can find him, even in this holy temple, and 
while I speak. 

Believe that you are a sinner. 

Believe that you are a lost sinner. 

Believe that you cannot save yourself, and that no- 
body but God in Christ can save you. 
8* 



90 SERMONS. 

Believe that, still, God pities, and has made provision 
for the rescue of the lost. 

Believe that this provision is available to you, on two 
simple, reasonable conditions ; that you repent and re- 
form, and believe that God will save you for Christ's 
sake. 

And, finally and chiefly, believe that he will do this 
noiv^ and act now on this faith. Say to God : ' Lord, 
I am a wretched wanderer, deserving only of thy 
wrath, but I do believe thou art willing to save me, 
and wilt save me now ; I believe, help thou mine un- 
belief!' 

And if you still waver, consider that if you let go 
your hold on self, and try Christ as a Saviour, and 
were to be disappointed, you could be no worse off than 
you are now! 

Come then, every one, and, in humble trust, utter 
the language of your inmost heart in that penitent 



song : 



" Just as I am, without one plea, 
But that thy blood was shed for me, 
And that thou bid'st me come to thee, 
O ! Lamb of God, I come ! 

" Just as I am, and waiting not 
To rid my soul of one dark blot, 
To thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot, 
O ! Lamb of God, I come ! 

" Just as I am, though tossed about 
With many a conflict, many a doubt, 
With fears within, and wars without, 
O ! Lamb of God, I come ! 



THE WAY OF SALVATION. 91 

" Just as I am — poor, wretched, blind ; 
Sight, riches, heaHng of the mind, 
Yea, all I need in thee to find, 
O ! Lamb of God, I come ! 

" Just as I am thou wilt receive, 
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve ; 
Because thy promise I beheve, 
O! Lambof God, Icome!" 



Y. 

THE CONVERSION OF THE ETHIOP* 



ACTS VIII: 87. 



AND HE ANSWERED AND SAID, I BELIEVE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE 

SON OP GOD. 

Attempt, as we may, to explain to the sinner the pro- 
cess of conversion, by abstract speech, there vs^ill always 
linger around it something of that indefiniteness with 
which the human mind naturally clothes objects of pure 
thought, disconnected from actual existence. It is 
sometimes well for us, therefore, to analyze individual 
cases of regeneration, that we may educe from them 
the truth in its most concrete and comprehensible form, 
and thus more securely, because more exactly, make it 
the guide of life. And, as God knows this our neces- 
sity, and knows that we might easily be misled, if, to 
satisfy it, we were left to select some man, living or 
dead, who should seem to us to be a Christian, and 
were to attempt to follow him, when he might not 
really himself have passed from death unto life ; he has 
kindly given us individual cases, described with more 



* Pine Street Church, March 28th, 1858. 
(92) 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ETHIOP. 93 

or less minuteness, in his holy word, and certified, as 
genuine, by it, so that we may be sure that, when they 
guide us, it will not be the blind leading the blind into 
the ditch. 

I propose, then, for our instruction, this afternoon,^ 
the account given us, in the Acts of the Apostles, of 
the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch, treasurer of 
Queen Candace ; a narrative, which I select to-day, in 
preference to others, because, in some respects, it seems 
to me to come nearer to an exact resemblance to the 
condition of many here present, than that of any other 
New Testament convert, inasmuch as this man had not 
been chargeable with any open offence ; (as Paul with 
persecuting the Church, Zaccheus with overreaching 
tax-payers, the dying thief with robbery, the Phillipian 
jailer with the intent of suicide,) but had been moral, 
upright, reputable, thoughtful ; and was even converted 
on his way home from the Temple of God. 

It is but little of his private personal history that is re- 
vealed to us ; his very name itself left out ! He comes 
down to future generations on the sacred page, not for 
the sake of a name, but for the sake of a principle. As 
the old Italian artists used — as they do in Rome to 
this day — to go out into the streets and select some 
beggar with a noble face, (and many Roman beggars 
have noble faces,) and^ using him — nameless and to 
be forgotten — as a model, paint his lineaments into 
some great picture, for the far future, as the face of 
some august ideal personage ; so, here, the Holy Spirit 
seized upon this Ethiop, and has pictured, from him, 
one style of a Christian man, newly born. 

Ethiopia was the modern Nubia ; and both Pliny and 



94 SERMONS. 

Strabo inform us that Candace was the family name of 
the Queens of Meroe on the upper Nile ; as Pharaoh 
was of the old kings of Egypt. This man was her 
"eunuch," — a word which originally meant '^ cham- 
berlain," — and he had the care of her palace and of 
her treasury; a position of no small worldly dignity 
and responsibility. 

By some kind Providence, this dark-skinned yet 
well-educated and powerful person had become a pros- 
elyte to the Jewish religion, and a believer in, and stu- 
dent of the Old Testament. Perhaps, sickening of the 
heathenism around him, he may have fallen in with 
some emigrant Israelite, who placed in his hand the 
Law and the Prophets, and guided his inquiring mind 
to the belief of Jehovah, as the one living and true God. 
This awoke a strong desire to know more of this new 
and wonderful religion. Perhaps the same sacred in- 
fluence which in the former generation had led the 
Magi to journey from Persia to Bethlehem, to pay hom- 
age to the infant Jesus, now persuaded him to go up to 
Jerusalem to worship. Obtaining leave of absence from 
his indulgent mistress — not unlikely herself a lineal 
descendant from the Queen of Sheba (supposed to have 
been this same Meroe), who, more than a thousand 
years before, had visited the metropolis of Judaea, to 
"prove" king Solomon "with hard questions," — he 
arranges his affairs for the long journey, and sets out 
with an eager heart. 

He finds the old form of godliness still enacted upon 
Mount Moriah. The priests chant and sacrifice still, in 
stupid and rebellious unconsciousness that the great 
sacrifice had been already offered, once for all, on Oal- 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ETHIOP. 95 

vary. So distinguished a visitor, doubtless, received 
much attention from the worldly and intriguing Chief 
Priests and Pharisees. Perhaps, at some period of his 
stay, they took him up to the pinnacle of the Temple, 
and showed him the greatness of the kingdom, and in- 
cidentally remarked that, three or four years before, an 
imposter named Jesus, had, for a time, threatened their 
peace, but had been put to death with the malefactors, 
and his deluded followers scattered ; though many of 
them, of the lower and more ignorant classes, still hung 
about the city, preposterously affirming that he had 
risen from the dead, and had been seen to ascend up 
on high. 

The period of his stay concluded, the Ethiopian gath- 
ers together his company of attendants, and turns his 
face southward, " into the way that goeth down from 
Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert," — his direct 
pathway of return. He has enjoyed his visit. It has 
strengthened his faith in the reality of the invisible God, 
thus to look upon his magnificent Temple, and this 
great and beautiful city that is so peculiarly identified 
with the divine name and power. But, there is still 
within him — notwithstanding all — a sense of some- 
thing not wholly met ; a feeling as if there were locked 
recesses in his own breast, and in the sacred volume, 
for whose comfortable opening he had not found any 
key. So — after taking his last lingering look upon 
the glittering pinnacles of the great sanctuary, as the 
hills to the west of Betlilehem rose between them and 
his eye — he seated himself in his chariot, and — 
as if to look for some better thing to come, without 
which, all that he had yet learned, and felt, could not 



96 SERMONS. 

be made perfect — opened his cherished and costly roll 
of the prophet Isaiah, and began to read. And this 
was where he read (the 53d chapter) : '' He is despised 
and rejected of men, etc. . . . Surely he hath borne 
our grief, and carried our sorrows, etc. . . . He was 
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our 
iniquities, etc. . . . He is brought as a lamb to the 
slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers, is dumb, 
so he openeth not his mouth," etc. He was reading 
aloud ; and he suddenly heard a voice saying : — ' un- 
derstandest thou what thou readest ? ' Looking down, 
he sees a Jew walking by the side of his chariot, who 
had evidently overheard his utterance, and in whose 
eye and aspect, he discerns an intelligence and a cour- 
tesy that win his confidence, and smooth the abrupt- 
ness of the salutation, and allure him toward further 
converse. So he answers, meekly, ' how can I, except 
some man should expound to me ? come up, and sit 
with me, and teach me whether the prophet speaketh 
these things of himself, or of some other man ? ' 

Perhaps some talk had been made at Jerusalem 
about this very passage, and the Scribes, anxious to 
foreclose the possibility of this man's becoming a Chris- 
tian, had told him that Isaiah was here foretelling 
merely something that was, sometime, to happen to 
himself. 

So, now, this wayfarer — none other than Philip, the 
Evangelist, sent by God himself hither on purpose for 
this meeting — sat down by the side of this honest 
(though not distressed) inquirer, and taking this pas- 
sage of Isaiah as his text, went on to tell him of Jesus, 
the Saviour ; that Isaiah, in the passage under consid- 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ETHIOP. 97 

eration, predicted his coming, and the treatment that 
he would receive from men : that all the prophets had 
prophesied him ; that all the sacrifices had prepared the 
way for him ; that, as God had been leading the nation 
for almost fifteen hundred years to become familiar with 
the idea that sin could only be forgiven when a lamb 
was slain as a sacrifice of expiation, so now, at last, he 
had given his Son to be such a sacrifice, slain once for 
all, for the guilt of all ; so that this Jesus, of whom all 
the prophets had made mention, and toward whom all 
the Mosaic service had dimly yet directly pointed, who 
liad been crucified on Calvary three years before, was, 
indeed, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of 
the world ; that all men may now be forgiven of God for 
his sake ; that he himself needs no longer to offer obla- 
tions now vain upon altars obsolete, for the pardon of his 
own guilt ; but that if, and when, he is ready — in sin- 
cere penitence for his past offences, and with an honest 
purpose of better life for the future — to accept and ap- 
propriate, by faith, this sacrifice of Jesus to himself, and 
for liis own case, and ready to promise, in baptism, to 
love him evermore supremely, and obey him faithfully, 
then, in that moment, God is ready to pardon him and 
reckon him among the number of his own, — to be pro- 
tected and sanctified on earth, and to be glorified in 
heaven ! 

Philip expounds, and the eunuch listens ; and as he 
listens, his dark face glows with a kindling faith. This, 
at last, is just what he wants. This satisfies the hunger 
of his soul. This does for him, what nothing in his 
own Egyptian home, nothing in the splendid service of 
the Temple, nothing even in his own meditations on 

9 



98 SERMONS. 

the Sacred books, had been able before to do. It is so 
obviously true, so exactly that key which he has so long 
wanted to unlock the dark chambers of prophecy, and 
of his own consciousness, that he cannot doubt its truth. 
He yields, at once, to its appeal. 

' Believe on Jesus as my Lamb whom God hath slain 
in my place ? Yes ! he is the very Saviour whom I 
need.' 

' Be sorry for the past ? Yes ! for my sins have made 
me wretched, have offended God, have pierced him!^ 

' Be holy for the future ? Yes ! that is what I want 
— to be holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners 
— just as he was ! ' 

' Believe that he did die for me, and that God will 
forgive, even me, for his sake ? Yes ! why should I 
hot believe it ; when there is testimony to it that I 
should receive and act upon in any exigency of life, 
and when it is, in itself, so desirable to be believed ! ' 

' Promise in baptism to be his — only his — his for- 
ever ? Yes ! common gratitude, a just obedience to his 
request, my own influence upon my own future, and 
upon that of others, make it not merely reasonable, but 
a matter of obligation ! ' 

' See ! ' (that same Holy Ghost which had aforetime 
prepared his spirit, and sent Philip to him, and so ar- 
rayed motives before liis mind as now to lead his free 
agency to these decisions, has also so arranged it that 
the chariot, on its desert way — afar from lake or run- 
ning stream — is now passing where a little rain-pool, 
the legacy of some late cloud, glistens beside the path,) 
' See ! here is water, what doth hinder me to be bap- 
tized, — to make this consecration now and here ? ' 



i 



THE CONVERSION OF THE ETHIOP. 99 

Philip answered : ' if thou believest with all thine 
heart, thou mayest.' 

The eunuch responded : '1 do believe : — that Jesus 
Christ is the Son of God ; that, as his Son, his coming 
to earth, and his death, were those of Messiah so long 
predicted to save his people from their sins ; and that, 
as Messiah — the Lamb of God — he has made atone- 
ment for me, so that God now forgives me for his sake ! 
And this I believe with all my heart ! ' 

So the chariot stood still by the rain-pool ; and Philip 
and the eunuch alighted, and stepped with their san- 
daled feet into the pool ; and Philip stooped down, and 
lifting up water in the cup of his hand, poured it on 
the eunuch's head, and baptized him '' into the name 
of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost," — the 
company of attendants looking on in awestruck silence ! 

And when they had stepped out of the pool, and the 
eunuch, not unlikely, was kneeling down to thank God, 
in the fullness of his joy for the great blessing of that 
day ; the Spirit of the Lord led away Philip (now that 
his work there was done, aiid he was wanted elsewhere) ; 
and when the Ethiopian looked for him he could see him 
no more. So the happy man ascended his chariot and 
pursued his journey — rejoicing ; and we see him no 
more — until we meet him (if we are willing to be 
saved by Christ as he was) among that great multitude, 
out of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and 
tongues, who have washed their robes, and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb ! 

Such is the record ; brief, yet ample ! Its philosophy 
seems to me very simple. This Egyptian nobleman 



100 SERMONS. 

was a believer in the true God, and was an upright, 
correct, and honorable man, with instincts leading him 
to desire salvation. He went up to Jerusalem to pay 
outward respect to religion, and to see if he could gain 
there any progress in the direction in which he sought 
more light. He took his Bible with him, and as he was 
returning, sitting in his chariot, he read it in an inquir- 
ing state of mind. Yet he was not, what we term, ' anx- 
ious.' He had no acute distress. He had none of 
Paul's sharp experience. He was not compelled to cry 
out, with the jailer's agony 'what must I do to be 
saved ? ' On the contrary, he was perfectly calm and 
outwardly undisturbed. But he did really desire to 
have more light ; ivas really ivilling to vjalk in it when 
he could get it. And when Philip explained the way 
of salvation to him, and he saw how it dovetailed into 
all that he knew, on the one hand, and all that he 
needed, on the other, he immediately received it, with- 
out a doubt, as true, and acted upon it, and went his 
way rejoicing. 

Oh ! if he kept on — after Philip left him — passing 
in course through the Prophet's pages, how his eye 
must have flashed with joy, and then dimmed with the 
tear of gratitude, as he reached the 56th chapter and 
read in its third and following verses, the words : — '' nei- 
ther let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself 
to the Lord, speak, saying. The Lord hath utterly sepa- 
rated me from his people : neither let the eunuch say, 
Behold, I am a dry tree ! for thus saith the Lord unto 
the eunuclis that keep my Sabbaths and choose the 
things that please me, and take hold of my covenant ; 
even unto them will I give in mine house and within 



THE CONVERSlOy OF THE ETHIOP. 101 

mv walls, a place and a name better than of sons and of 
daughters, I \vill give them an everlasting name, that 
shall not be cut off." 

My dear impenitent friends, how simple and how 
sweet, are the lessons of this narrative to you. 

You need salvation ; however moral, upright, honor- 
able, thoughtful, you may be. 

You can be converted here and now ; even if you are 
not agonized with ' conviction.' 

To be saved, you must study divine truth. 

You must receive meekly, and without any doubt, its 
teachings. 

You must not interpose objections to break its force. 

You must incline your hearts with eagerness to its 
words. 

When God's messenger teUs you (as I now do) that 
Christ died for you, and that even you may be forgiven 
now, here, for his sake ; you must yield, and believe, 
and obey. 

So yielding, so beheving, so obeying, you may go 
hence on your way rejoicing ; even though your heart, 
when you came in hither, was blacker than the skin of 
this ancient Ethiop. 

Will you thus repent, beUeve, obey, rejoice, to-day ? 



YI. 

THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHEUS* 



LUKE XIX: 



AND HE MADE HASTE, AND CAME DOWN, AND RECEIVED HIM JOY- 
FULLY. 

I ASK you to consider, this afternoon, the conversion 
of Zaccheus, with some of the lessons involved in it. 

When Judgea was conquered by the Romans, Csesar 
levied taxes upon all its inhabitants, and a class of offi- 
cers, called publicans, was appointed to collect those 
taxes ; who appear to have been paid by a percentage of 
their collections. Naturally enough, they were, there- 
fore, tempted to oppress the people by illegal exactions, 
that they might enrich themselves the more. Thus 
they gradually became noted for their violence and ex- 
tortions ; so that Theocritus said he considered " the 
bear and the lion the most cruel among the beasts of 
the forest, and the publican, among the beasts of the 
city." In our Saviour's time, the very name was one 
of reproach and contempt, so that Christ — using the 
popular language to give force to his remark — once 



* Pine Street Church, April 4th, 1858. 
( 102 ) 



THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHEUS. 103 

said, of the incorrigible offender, " let him be unto thee 
as an heathen man and a publican." This office was, 
indeed, especially odious to the Jews, because they re- 
garded the whole business of the payment of tribute to 
Caesar, as illegal, and looked upon the publicans much 
as our fathers looked upDn the officers of the British 
crown, who attempted to collect the odious ^ stamp' tax ; 
and they had a maxim (so Grotius tells us) that a re- 
ligious man who became a publican, was to be excluded 
from their fellowship for the act ; and they would not 
even receive his gifts at the Temple, — placing him, in 
that respect, in the same category with thieves and 
harlots. 

Now Zaccheus — whose history is outlined in the 
chapter of our text — was the ' chief of the publicans ; ' 
or the superintendent of this unpopular and (as it was 
carried on) infamous business, at Jericho. And as it is 
stated that he was ' rich,' it would seem to be clear — 
since men, in such circumstances, seldom amass wealth 
by resisting the temptations of their position — that he 
must have been unscrupulous, avaricious, and inhuman, 
and had gained his wealth by oppressing the poor, and 
making the most of his dishonorable trade. 

Upon a certain day in the third year of our Saviour's 
ministrations in Judasa, a little while after the raising of 
Lazarus, and the healing of blind Bartimeus, and a little 
while before the crucifixion, Jesus had occasion to pass 
tlirough Jericho, and, in some way, Zaccheus became 
aware of the fact. He had heard that there was such a 
person, who was considered remarkable by many, and 
felt some curiosity to see him ; and, being upon the 
public way when the approaching multitude indicated 



10-4 SERMONS. 

his coming, and being short in stature, and perceiving 
that from the level of the street he would not be able 
to obtain sight of Jesus, he climbed up into a sycamore 
tree, standing adjacent, from whose boughs he could 
get an undisturbed view of all that might take place. 

Slowly the heterogeneous procession, of which Jesus 
was the nucleus, drew near, and as its central personage 
was passing exactly where the chief publican could sat- 
isfy his curiosity, and see what manner of person he 
was, the Saviour suddenly looked up, and, catching the 
eye that was fixed upon him, — spake, calling the publi- 
can by name, as if he knew him, and had known, from 
all eternity, that he would be there — " Zaccheus ! make 
haste, and come down ; for to-day I must abide at thy 
house." Strange salutation from Christ to Am, yet full 
of gladness to his scarce-believing ear ! Hastily he de- 
scended, and joyfully conducted the Saviour to his own 
house. 

The crowd without, murmured ; disgusted that Jesus 
should select as his host, a man who, by his very em- 
ployment, was exiled from decent society, and was even 
driven from the courts of the Lord ! 

What conversation followed within the house, we are 
not informed. We do not know what precise words of 
reproof, or of encouragement or counsel, Christ em- 
ployed to win and convince this waiting soul. Doubt- 
less, however — since no record is made — it was the 
same old simple message which he had, so many times 
before, uttered to others : ' repent, believe.' Whatever 
it was, however, it had its effect ; for Zaccheus " stood 
and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my 
goods I give " (or, to translate the present verb in the 



THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHEUS. 105 

future tense, as is often done in the Greek, and, doubt- 
less, should be done here) " the half of my goods I vjHI 
give to the poor, and if I have taken any thing from 
any man by false accusation," [by a dishonest tax-list] 
" I will restore him four-fold." 

Notice that this declaration, interpreted by his pre- 
vious life, involves an avowal of sincere repentance for 
sin, and an honest purpose to reform ; and that it contains 
also the distinct recognition of faith in Christ as a Divine 
Teacher. He calls him ' Lord.' And this man — whose 
great besetting sin would appear to have been avarice — 
pledges himself to give henceforth as much to his poor 
neighbors as he keeps for himself. And he who seems 
to have made his money largely by overcharging taxes, 
and appropriating the overplus beyond that which Cae- 
sar claimed ; now avows his deliberate determination to 
review every such case, and pay back to all such per- 
sons four-fold that of which he had robbed them. 

No wonder that Christ said — on hearing these words, 
and marking the transparent honesty, and energy of pur- 
pose, with which they were uttered — ''this day is sal- 
vation come to this house : " adding moreover — allud- 
ing, doubtless, to that ostracism by which his method 
of livelihood had severed Zaccheus from the worship, 
and sympathies, and hopes, of the Jewish nation — 
" forasmuch as he also is [now] a son of Abraham " — 
that is, repentance and the believing reception of Jesus, 
as a teacher sent from God, now make this man, so 
long an exile from the Temple, even more a cliild of 
faithful Abraham, than the outwardly Orthodox but in- 
wardly obdurate majority of his nation ; verifying that 
word which was uttered to the Chief Priests : '' Verily, 



106 SERMONS. 

I say unto you, that the pubhcans, and the harlots, go 
into the kingdom of God before you." 

The record of this interview is closed by a general re- 
mark by which our Saviour seems to draw an inference 
from this conversion of Zaccheus, for the benefit of all 
who may have witnessed, or might hear of it. ' Are you 
amazed that such a wicked man ; one guilty of wicked- 
ness so unlikely to be repented of; one so bound in the 
cords of his past sins, and by his very position so situ- 
ated as to make it next to a miracle tliat he should 
repent at all ; do you wonder that one so wholly, so 
hopelessly lost ; a publican, nay, the chief publican, 
should be saved ? Limit not the grace of God — for the 
Son of man is come to seek, and to save, that which 
was lost ! ' The very hopelessness of the case of this 
man, to human view, is the great argument in proof 
that Christ will save him — for he came not to call the 
righteous, but sinners, to repentance ! 

I. This narrative, in the first place, instructs us that 
no man's position in the world, need to hinder his be- 
coming a Christian. 

If he is rich in purse, as Zaccheus was, he can come 
to Christ as he did. If he is poor in character, as 
Zaccheus was, he can still come to Christ as he did. If 
he is an outcast from respectable society ; so that all 
men should frown upon him, and murmur if Christ 
should speak to him and go home with him, still he 
may come to Christ. He is even all the more welcome 
to the love of the compassionate Redeemer for this ; 
for, tlie more utterly lost he is, to human view, the 
more eagerly will he be sought out, and forgiven, by 



THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHEUS. 107 

him who came to seek and to save that which was 
lost! 

II. This narrative teaches us that no man's business 
need keep him from becoming a Christian. 

The business which Zaccheus followed, was, probably, 
under all the circumstances, as hostile to every influ- 
ence of good, as any that is pursued by any sinner now 
on earth. And yet he became a Christian. Christ 
knew what he was, when he asked him to come down 
out of the sycamore tree : and from his very knowledge 
of the greatness of his need, he was led, specially, to 
invite him to admit him to his dwelling. Take courage, 
from this case, sinner ! and, no matter what you are ; 
no matter how much against your own conscience and 
the general good may be that craft by which you have 
had your sustenance ; come to Christ in penitence, and 
you will find that he will in no wise cast you out. That 
heaven which has already opened its pearly gates to ad- 
mit Zaccheus and Mary Magdalene, will never be closed 
against any human being, however wretched and vile, 
who has repented of sin and fixed his faith upon the 
Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. 

But do you say : ' what shall I do with my business, 
if I become a Christian ? I shall have to give it up ; I 
know how to do nothing else ; I shall starve ; and this 
is all which keeps me from Christ ? ' 

I answer: come to Christ, as Zaccheus did, and 
Christ will make you willing to give up every sin, and 
to give up your business, if that is a sin. And if you 
do give it up for his sake, he will take care of you. 
Xo man ever saw the righteous forsaken, or his seed 
begghig bread. It would be infinitely better, indeed. 



108 SERMONS. 

on the whole, for you to starve to death, if that were 
necessary, than to keep on willfully in known sin to se- 
cure a subsistence ; because you must die soon, in any 
event, and if you starve for Christ's sake, you only die a 
little sooner, and go to heaven, while if you willfully sin 
for bread, you die a little later, and go to hell. 

III. This narrative suggests to us that Christ is on 
the watch for sinners when they begin — for any reason 
— to turn their eyes toward him. 

They may climb up into a sycamore tree out of the 
merest curiosity to see him, without any knowledge of 
his real character, and without the first movement of 
desire to make his acquaintance ; but he will look up, 
and see them, and say '' make haste and come down, 
for this day I must abide with thee." They may stroll 
into a prayer meeting, just to see what is done there ; 
but Christ is there, and says '' this day I must abide 
with thee." They may happen into the House of God, 
from any motive but that of real worship, but as they 
sit there Christ sees them ; he knows all their some- 
times sad thoughts, all their occasional inward disquie- 
tude in view of desires which they cannot satisfy, and a 
conscience for which they cannot fijid peace ; he knows 
that he died to remove just these troubles from their 
life ; and his heart tenderly yearns toward them, and 
he says, '' Come unto me and I will give you rest." 

IV. This narrative informs us that he who ivould 
become a Christian^ must welcome Christ to his heart 
and home^ as a teacher and guest; and be willing to 
have it known that he does so. 

We have no reason to suppose that this conversion 
of Zaccheus would ever have taken place, if he had de- 



THE CONYERSION OF ZACCHEUS. 109 

clined the Saviour's request to come down and receive 
him, and his teachings ; nay, we have every reason in 
the world for the contrary opinion. If he had said, ' I 
know thee not who thou art ; — I do not wish to enter- 
tain thee ; — I am too bad to have thee come under my 
roof ; ' if he had said, or done, any things but receive 
Christ joyfully and listen to him reverently, and in faith, 
there is not the slightest probability that salvation would 
that day have come to his house. 

Salvation is by the truth. The Holy Spirit converts ; 
but it is by applying the truth to the soul, as the me- 
dium of its power. And, if you wish to become a 
Christian, you must welcome Christ to your confidence 
as a teacher, and not be ashamed to have others know 
that you do so. You must feel honored that he died 
for you, and sends his word and his Spirit to you ; that, 
by their united agency — you consenting, and repent- 
ing, and believing — you may be saved. You must go 
to the Bible, and read there Christ's words ; read them 
just as respectfully, and with just as earnest a listening 
of the soul, as if he were, indeed, in his own person, in 
your dwelling, instead of by his visible Gospel, and in- 
visible Spirit. 

V. Soy ag-ain, this narrative reminds us that he ivho 
would become a Christian^ must not only ivelcome Christ 
as a teacher but believe ivith all his heart what he says. 

Christ, unquestionably, told Zaccheus that he w^as 
a sinner ; that he was a great sinner ; that he followed 
a wicked trade ; that he had broken the perfect law of 
love so perpetually, that there was no hope for him in 
himself; that he was utterly lost; that he ought to re- 
pent, ought to forsake his wicked courses, ought to do 

10 



110 SERMONS. 

it instantly. Zaccheus believed him. Every word went 
home to his heart. He felt^ in his innermost soul, that 
every word was true. There was a voice within, that 
answered to Christ's voice without, and said: 'just so ; 
true, every word ! ' 

So it must be with you. When you open the New 
Testament, and stand there in Christ's presence, and he 
says to you : ' repent ; repent now ; you can repent 
now ; you have no excuse for not repenting now ; you 
must repent now, or be lost;' — believe him. Your 
own conscience, from within, repeats and endorses his 
words coming from without. You know they are true 
words. Believe them, banish every doubt, surrender 
your whole soul to them, and obey them, that you 
may have eternal life ! 

VI. This narrative^ again, explains to us the fact 
that he who wishes to become a Christian, may repent 
immediately, — without long conviction, or great excite- 
ment, 

'' There are diversities of operations, but it is the 
same God which worketh all in all." Paul had been a 
bad man, and Christ smote him down in the highway, 
and condemned him to dark and wearisome days and 
nights, before the true light shined upon his soul. 
Zaccheus had been, probably, a worse man than Paul, 
yet Christ smiled upon him in the highway, and went 
home to dine with him, and Zaccheus rose up from the 
table to say — with all his soul, yet not with any mani- 
fested preliminary agony of spirit — ' I repent ; I will 
do works meet for repentance.' And Christ replies: 
' this day [then] is salvation come to thine house I ' 

Here the great truth comes out. It is not the agony 



THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHEUS. Ill 

of their conTiction that saves men. It is their penitence 
and faith. And if penitence and faith can be secured, 
salvation comes ; whether with or Trithout strong cry- 
ing and tears. 

If Zaccheus had taken time to think longer before 
he gave up the contest, and acknowledged that he was 
wrong, and began to repair that wrong ; if he had said 
to Christ : ^ I am glad I have met you ; I am struck by 
your observations ; I shall think of them, and after due 
reflection, I presume I shalhcomply with your counsel ; ' 
— one of two things would have been true. Either he 
would have gone back to his old hardness of heart, and 
been lost ; or, in meditations on his past history, and 
present condition — in order to see if Christ's words 
were really true concerning him — he would have 
worked himself up into a frenzy of despair, as, one by 
one, he counted over and over the long catalogue of his 
abominations ; and, after intense suffering consequent 
upon such a process, would, at last have done just what 
he really did do, at first ; — cordially believe all that 
Christ said, and begin to act upon it. Many a man 
thus brings a load of sorrow upon himself just by his 
unwillingness to do without it, that which by the grace 
of God it at last compels him to perform. " I was 
awoke,'' says Cesar Malan, of Geneva, " from the slum- 
bers of sin, as a father awakes his child in the morning, 
by a kiss on his lips." But if the child will not awake 
and arise for the kiss, he may necessitate a blow ! 

Let no man doubt, then, that God is willing to receive 
him now ; just as he is, and feeling just as he feels — if 
he is himself ready now to repent and believe. 

VII. This narrative, again, enjoins upon us that the 



112 SERMONS. 

vian ivho desires to become a Christian^ must not only 
welcome Chrisfs teachings and believe it^ and act upon 
it^ without delay, by repentance ; but his repentance must 
be thorough and fruitful, as that of Zaccheus was. 

It is almost certain that Zaccheus had become rich 
by extortion. Probably his extortion had been, much 
of it, at least, technically legal ; so that those whom he 
had plundered had no redress, in the courts, against 
him. Now, who does not see that if he had now said, 
in a general way : ' I have been a great sinner ; I am 
very sorry ; I am afraid I have done a great deal of 
mischief, and made a great many families unhappy ; I 
will try and not do so any more ; ' and had hugged his 
bags of treasure ; and if any body said any thing about 
restitution, had replied : ' Oh ! that is simply impossi- 
ble ; I do not now know who, nor where, nor when ; I can- 
not now get at them ; besides, I meant no harm, I will 
try and do differently in future,' — and still hugged his 
treasure — who does not see that Jesus would have 
lacked the convincing element of the sincerity of his re- 
pentance, and never could have declared him to be ' a 
son of Abraham ! ' The love of money was the root of 
all his evil, and so his first volition of repentance was 
to crucify that love. 

Notice the energy, to a Jewish mind, involved in 
the very form of his phrase. " Four-fold." This was 
what the Jewish law condemned a man to pay when he 
had stolen, and the theft was proved upon him. But 
when he had stolen, and himself confessed it, his plea of 
guilty reduced his fine to the amount taken, with one 
fifth added. Zaccheus therefore, who might, on this 
confession, have escaped with a good conscience before 



THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHEUS. 113 

the law, on payment of one hundred and twenty per 
cent. ; of his own accord, as feeling that he is really con- 
demned in the court of conscience, pledges himself to 
restore /(9wr hundred per cent, — a balance of two hun- 
dred and eighty per cent, to the credit of the thorough- 
ness of the work ! 

When men become real Christians they will imitate 
Zaccheus in this. They will be large-hearted in their 
penitence ; thorough in their reform. If any, who 
thinks himself penitent, finds himself disposed to get off 
as easily as possible in the matter of repentance and 
restitution, it is a bad sign. He is, probably, mistaken ! 
Salvation has not come to his house ! 

Finally. This narrative of Zaccheus encourages 
Christians to labor., in the spirit of Christy ivith every- 
body., everywhere. You will not be likely to meet a 
worse man than he was ! Speak to that drunkard, 
rumseller, gambler ! Ask him to let Christ into his 
house ! Tell him Christ will come ! Tell him about 
Zaccheus I Tell him the same door is open, into the 
same heaven, for him I Pray for him, and with him, in 
the loving, pitying spirit of Jesus, and Christ may say, 
of him also : — 'he is a son of Abraham ! ' 

10* 



YIL 

THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA.* 



ACTS XVI: 14. 

WHOSE HEART THE LORD OPENED, THAT SHE ATTENDED UNTO THE 
THINGS WHICH WERE SPOKEN OP PAUL. 

In the Scriptural account of those cases of conversion 
which we have examined, on the afternoon of the last 
two Sabbaths — those of the Ethiopian Eunuch, and of 
Zaccheus the publican — the agency of the men them- 
selves is made prominent. It may now be profitable for 
us to turn to another narrative, where the stress is more 
especially laid upon the share which the Holy Spirit has 
in the complex process. 

Philippi was the chief city of eastern Macedonia, lying 
just above the head of the JEgean Sea, on the borders 
of Thrace ; and was a colony of Rome. Mingled with 
its Greek and Roman population, were a few Jews. 
They were not enough to have a synagogue, but they 
used to go, on the Sabbath, out of the city gate down 
to the banks of the Gaggitas, where they would perform 
the ablutions connected with their ritual service, and 
offer their customary prayers. 



* Pine Street Church, April 11th, 1858. 
(114) 



THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA. 115 

To this city, Paul, accompanied by Silas, came on his 
second missionary journey into Asia, about a. n. 51, 
(18 years after the ascension of Christ) having seen 
a vision, while at Troas, which he interpreted as a 
command of God to go over into Macedonia, and labor. 
They appear to have arrived early in the week, yet no 
special record of their doings is made until the Sabbath, 
when they went out of the city gate, and finding ' the 
place where prayer was wont to be made,' joined them- 
selves to the little company of Jews, to worship with 
them. They assumed, at once, the attitude of teachers, 
and sat down to speak to those who resorted thither, 
whom they found to be mostly women. 

Among this female portion of the audience was one 
woman — Lydia by name — born a Gentile at Thyatira, 
a city some three or four hundred miles distant, in the 
province of Lydia, in Asia ; noted for its skill in purple 
dyes, — even as early as the time of Homer, who (Iliad 
iv : 141) compares the staining of the thighs of the 
wounded Menelaus by the flowing blood, to the color- 
ing of ivory with purple, by the Lydian women. She 
was now resident here, as a seller of that merchandise 
by the manufacture of which her native place had its 
wealth. Somewhere — at Thyatira, or since her resi- 
dence at Philippi — she had renounced her paganism, 
and was thus, like the Ethiopian eunuch, a proselyte to 
the Jewish faith ; a believer in the true God, and a rev- 
erent reader of the Law and the Prophets, though as 
yet, spiritually unenlightened ; resembling scores of 
people in every Christian assembly, who are, in like 
manner, near the kingdom of heaven, without being 
in it. 



116 SERMONS. 

As these Christian teachers spake, on this occasion, 
endeavoring to convince these Jews, and Jewish prose- 
lytes, that Jesus was the Messiah so long expected, and, 
as such, entitled to receive their faith and ready to for- 
give their sins, we read that it pleased ' the Lord ' to 
' open ' the ' heart ' of Lydia, so that she ' attended to 
the things that were spoken by Paul.' Being thus con- 
vinced that Jesus was the Messiah — her Saviour — and 
being willing and desirous not only to put her personal 
trust in him, for time and for eternity, but to be identi- 
fied publicly with his followers ; she was, forthwith, bap- 
tized, with her household. She immediately commenced 
the performance of Christian duty, by insisting that Paul 
and his companions should accompany her to her own 
house, and abide there ; which they did. And when 
the storm of persecution soon burst upon them, and 
Paul and Silas were scourged and imprisoned, it was 
still her house that received them, when, bleeding from 
the lictor's lash, they were, afterward, ' let go.' 

Brief as is this sketch which Luke gives us of this 
conversion, its prominent points are well marked, and 
instructive ; and we can hardly fail to derive benefit 
from their consideration. 

I. This narrative of the spiritual change ivhich took 
place in the case of Lydia ^ sheds light upon the ordinary re- 
lation of the vjork of the Holy Ghost to human redemption. 

In general terms, the Bible asserts that a work of God 
upon the heart is indispensable to our salvation. God 
speaks of such a work : promising to give (on certain 
conditions) to men ' an heart of flesh ' instead of the 
stony heart of sin ; ' a new spirit ' instead of the natural 



I 



THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA. 117 

spirit of love to the ^voiid : to ' cause ' us to walk in his 
statutes, and keep his judgments, and do them ; to 
' give us power ' to become the sons of God. And when 
it particularly describes this work, it calls it the work 
of the Holy Spirit. ' That which is born of the Spirit, 
is spirit.' ' Xot by works of righteousness which we 
have done, but according to his mercy he saves us, by 
the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy 
Ghost, which he sheds on us abundantly, through Jesus 
Christ our Saviour.' ' The Love of God is shed abroad 
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto 
us.' And Christ said to his followers, before his depart- 
ure : ' it is expedient for you that I go away : for if I 
go not away, the Comforter [whom he described to be 
the Holy Ghost] will not come unto you ; but if I de- 
part, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, 
he will reprove tlie world of sin, and of righteousness, 
and of judgment — and when he, the Spirit of truth, is 
come, he will guide you into all truth. He shall teach 
you all things, and bring all things to your remem- 
brance.' So we are warned not to ' grieve ' the Holy 
Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed unto the day of 
redemption ; and it is with reference to the indispensa- 
bleness of His aid — as commissioned by God — that 
Christ said ' no man can come to me, except the Father 
wiiich hath sent me, draw him ; ' and again, ' no man 
can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my 
Father.' 

This ' cannot ' is the worst kind of a cannot, — a will 
not — as Christ explains, in the fifth of John : — 'ye 
will not come to me that ye might have life.' AVe are, 
naturally, so stubborn in our sin, that, while we can, 



118 SERMONS. 

and therefore ought to, stop sinning and go to Christ, 
we will not, and therefore, practically, cannot. To use 
the quaint thought of Andrew Gray, there are so many 
bars upon the door of the heart, which we will not un- 
bolt to let Christ in, that if left to ourselves, he cannot 
enter, and we must perish. There is the bar of igno- 
rance ; the bar of unbelief ; the bar of enmity ; the bar 
of pride ; the bar of discouragement ; the bar of unwil- 
lingness ; the bar of worldliness ; the bar of sloth ; the 
bar of evil habits ; the bar of a seared conscience and a 
hardened heart, so that, even if we sit in the sanctuary 
with all these bars bolting the heart against the truth, 
' hearing, we shall hear and not understand, and seeing, 
we shall see and not perceive, for our heart is waxed 
gross, and our ears are dull of hearing, and our eyes 
we have closed ; lest, at any time, we should see with 
our eyes, and hear with our ears, and should understand 
with our heart, and be converted, and God should heal 
us.' And when Christ comes and says : ' behold I stand 
at the door and knock : if any man will hear my voice, 
and open the door, I will come in to him,' we say : ' No ! 
I am well enough off as I am. I will not unbolt the 
door ; I desire not the knowledge of thy ways.' 

Thus the case stands. We have barred the door, and 
Christ is knocking, knocking, knocking ; but we will 
not open the door and let him in. He cannot get in ; 
for he will never violate our free agency, never climb 
up some other way. If he ever comes in, it will be 
through that door, opened willingly by ourselves. Now, 
seeing this sad case, God commissions the Holy Spirit 
to reach down its kind hand out of heaven into our 
hearts to push back the bolts. It will not force us. 



THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA. 119 

But it is on the inside. It has come down out of heaven 
directly within. And it says : ' let me ; oh ! let me 
push back the bolts ; consent that I should do it ; make 
my doing of it thine own ; they are rusted in, and hard 
to move, and you have let them stay bolted so long that 
you cannot move them now ; but consent that I should 
help you, and I, who am omnipotent, will help you ; 
and the door shall open, and this patient, long-suffering 
Redeemer, who has been standing without till his head 
is filled with dew, and his locks with the drops of the 
night, shall come in ; and your joy shall be full : Let 
me open your heart. Your letting makes my act 
yours ; so that Christ can come in by your consent ! ' 

Thus — it would seem, precisely thus — did the Lord, 
by his Holy Spirit, ' open ' the heart of Lydia. She 
seems to have gone to that place of prayer, that day, 
as she had gone so many times before, with the veil of 
Judaism untaken away from her eyes ; predisposed 
against this new religion. And when Christ spake to 
her, through his faithful Paul, her heart was barred 
against him. She would naturally say : ' who are you, 
dusty wayfarer that you are, a poor and unknown 
stranger here in Macedonia, that you should be spirit- 
ually wiser than all the Jews of old ; how do I know 
whether you are even an honest and truth-telling man 
at all ; and this doctrine which you advocate — have the 
Chief Priests, the Rulers, the Pharisees at Jerusalem 
believed it ? And this Jesus — does not every well-in- 
formed Jew know that he was slain by the highest au- 
thority of the nation — the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem; 
after full investigation and trial, as a blasphemous im- 
postor ? You are either an impostor yourself, seeking 



120 SERMONS. 

your own profit, in some way, out of your attempted 
proselytism of us few faithful women here in PhiHppi ; 
or you are yourself deluded. Go, let us worship in 
peace, as the fathers did. And when Messiah cometh, 
his kingdom will be heralded by the tramp of Judaean 
armies going forth to the conquest of all nations — ac- 
cording to the words of the prophets of old — and not 
by unknown strollers with sandals and staff.' 

So the bolts would be fastened, one by one, until the 
door of her heart would be fully barred against Paul's 
message. But the Lord sent his Spirit with counter 
suggestions ; ' hear him — is not his aspect frank, and 
humble, and winning ? are not his words like the words 
of one whom God has instructed? Are you certain 
that Messiah is not come ? Is he not the desire of all 
nations ? Are not the seventy weeks accomplished ? 
May riot the authorities at Jerusalem have been mis- 
taken ? Did not this Jesus do so many mighty works, 
that, if another Messiah should come, could he do more ? 
Do you not need a Saviour ; are you not troubled, and 
weary, and heavy laden ; would you not be glad to lis- 
ten to one who could give you rest ? Hear this man ! 
Behold how the very power of God is in him ! Have 
you not heard that he has healed the sick, and wrought 
many mighty miracles in proof that Jesus is the Christ ? 
Hear him ; believe him ; obey him ! ' 

And so — one by one — the bolts (drawn by the hand 
of the Spirit, Lydia consenting,) fly back, until the Lord 
has ' opened her heart.' The Holy Spirit has done it, 
and she has done it. She could not have done it if 
the Spirit had not compassionately wrought upon her 
soul, because she would not ; and the Holy Spirit could 



THE COxWERSION OF LYDIA. 121 

not have done it, if she had ' quenched ' it, ' and grieved ' 
it away ; and had not made its acts her own, by free 
consent. Here, it seems to me, we have an apt and ac- 
curate illustration of the general relation of the Holy 
Spirit to the conversion of individual sinners ; changing 
their hearts, they consenting. 

H. Such being the light ivhich this narrative sheds 
upon the agency of the Spirit in the tvork of marl's 
conversion^ it further illustrates^ in the second place^ 
the instrumentality by which that agency performs its 
work. 

The record says : ' whose heart the Lord opened, that 
she attended unto the things which were spoken of 
Paul.' It is elsewhere expressly said that ' Paul may 
plant, and ApoUos water, but it is God who giveth the 
increase ; who then is Paul, and who Apollos, but 
ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave 
to every man.' Paul, therefore, would have preached 
to Lydia in vain, if the Lord had not inclined her heart 
to listen to his teachings. It was exactly this which 
the Lord inclined her heart to do. He ' opened ' it to 
' the truth ; ' just as Christ ' opened ' the ' understand- 
ing ' of two of the disciples, ' that they might under- 
stand the Scriptures.' Thus truth is the convert- 
ing agency which the Spirit uses to consummate its 
work of salvation upon the soul. It sanctifies it, 
' through the truth.' Thus it is, that we are born of the 
Spirit 'by the word of God, which liveth and abideth 
forever.' Thus it is that God hath, from the beginning 
* chosen his people unto salvation, through sanctificar 
tion of the Spirit, and belief of the truth.' 

When Lydia, then, opened (or, rather, consented to 

11 



122 SERMONS. 

the Lord's merciful opening of) her heart to the things 
which were spoken of Paul ; when he told her of Jesus 
— that he was, indeed, 'the Christ/ so long predicted; 
that, if she desired the pardon of her sins, and the en- 
trance into her soul of the everlasting peace of God, she 
must believe in him ; she attended to it ; she believed it ; 
she yielded up her heart unto it ; she felt that he was 
just such a Saviour as she needed, and that she could 
take him for her Saviour, and appropriate to herself all 
the promises which he had made, and consecrate her- 
self to his service ; and not only consecrate herself to his 
service, but her substance, influence, all that she had, 
was, and could be ! 

In this same manner, when the Spirit opens the heart 
of sinners, they ought to attend to the truth and believe 
it ; making all its directions, threatenings, and promises, 
real to themselves ; as real as if now uttered audibly 
out of heaven, to them, by name. 

III. In the third place^ this narrative of Lydia^s con- 
version^ illustrates the nature of all real proof that the 
Holy Spirit has so opened the sinner'' s hearty and caused 
him to attend to the truth, as to convert his soul. 

We see two indications in Lydia's immediate con- 
duct, which establish, beyond a doubt, the fact of her 
change of heart. She was willing, immediately, pub- 
licly, to be baptized into Christ — to pledge herself as 
his future disciple and convert — and this when such a 
step involved momentous consequences of a temporal 
description. Christ's followers were everywhere spoken 
against ; bonds and imprisonment awaited them ; Paul 
and Silas were soon, actually, in prison, with their feet 
fast in the stocks. To become avowedly a Christian, 



THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA. 123 

then and there, was to invite a share of all this ; to re- 
nounce all old associations and fellowships, and la,unch 
out upon an untried and troubled sea. And that Lydia — 
knowing all this, — was willing, then and there, to brave 
it all for Christ, is the first proof of the reality of the 
change which God's opening of her heart to the truth, 
and her own subsequent attention to it, had produced. 

The other proof which her history gives, is in the fact 
mentioned, that she immediately taxed herself with the 
support of Paul and his comrades, while they might re- 
main at Philippi. She did not know how long their 
stay might be ; nor how hazardous it might be to her- 
self to entertain them under her own roof. But she 
wanted to identify herself with their cause, by opening 
to them the doors of her own home ; she desired the 
benefit of their constant counsel, and the joy of their 
continual presence ; and since she had a house and 
some ability with which to make them comfortable 
there, she not only ' passed the compliment ' with them 
of coming, but she urged it, she ' would not take no for 
an answer,' — she ' constrained ' them to go home with 
her, even making their acceptance of her request, their 
assent to the reality of her conversion — ''if ye have 
judged me to be faithful to the Lord " — in what I have 
now done — ''come into my house and abide there." 
They could not refuse to go, after that, without in so 
doing saying to her, ' you are deceived ; in our judg- 
ment, you have not the spirit of Christ, and are none of 
his.' So she ' constrained ' them. 

Thus, by immediate, fearless, entire, and self-denying 
consecration of himself to the service of Clirist, does 
the sinner demonstrate tliat he has been born of God ; 



124 SERMONS. 

that old things are passed away, and all things become 
new. 

Such seem to me the great lessons in Lydia's history, 
namely : — that the Holy Spirit makes the first move- 
ment toward our conversion, by unbarring the door of 
the heart ; that the heart is thus opened especially for 
the reception of truth ; and that when the heart has 
been opened, and the truth received, the conversion of 
the soul will be demonstrated by an immediate, thorough, 
disinterested committal of the life to the Lord's side. 

There are two or three further suggestions involved 
in her history, to which I beg your attention before we 
leave the subject. 

1. The narrative illustrates the practical harmony 
between the sinner's dependence upon God, and his 
acting for himself. It would doubtless have been quite 
impossible for Lydia to explain the metaphysics of the 
matter ; and she might have puzzled herself into perdi- 
tion over it, if she had waited intellectually to justify 
the consistency between the Lord's opening of her heart 
and her own free agency ; but she found no practical 
difficulty when, leaving all speculation on the subject, 
she just obeyed the command of God, by his help. No- 
body ever finds any, when imitating her obedience. 
God wrought upon her, and she wrought together with 
God, and so a work of salvation for her soul was accom- 
pHshed which never could have been accomplished with- 
out God's help, and never would have been, without 
her consent and cooperation. 

There is no inconsistence between this narrative and 
that of the conversion of Zaccheus, or the Ethiop. 



THE CONVERSION OF LYDIA. 125 

Here the sacred penman was divinely led to look at the 
matter, and to make his record of it, more from the side 
on which God works to save men ; there, more from 
the side on which man works — in penitence and faith — 
for his own salvation. 

2. The narrative suggests how the sinner may know 
when God's spirit is opening his heart. God opens 
hearts to ' attend to the truth.' And whenever a man 
feels especially drawn toward consideration of the great 
thoughts and lessons of the Bible ; whenever he finds 
himself especially tender in his consideration of appeals, 
from any source, which are designed to make him bet- 
ter ; whenever the world seems to shrink out of the 
field of his desire, and something nobler and holier to 
allure him toward itself, and he feels like the utterance 
of Agrippa's exclamation : " almost thou persuadest me 
to be a Christian," — let him understand that God, 
in his infinite tenderness for him, is ' opening his heart,' 
to ' turn him from darkness to light, and from the power 
of Satan unto God, that he may receive forgiveness of 
sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified 
by faith.' Let him now work together with God — won- 
dering at the love which stoops to care for such as he ! 
Let Mm — 

" Seize the kind promise while it waits, 
And march to Zion's heavenly gates : 
Believe, and take the promised rest ; 
Obey, and be forever blest." 

3. We find a hint here, finally, as to the place where 
lies the sinner's chief danger of repelling the aid of 
Divine Grace. That danger is spoken of in terms which 

11* 



126 SERMONS. 

have a fearful significance. Stephen called it ^resisting' 
the Holy Ghost. Paul warned the Ephesians against it 
under the name of ' grieving ' the Holy Spirit ; and 
commanded the Thessalonians to ' quench not the 
Spirit ; ' while he brought the same peril to the notice 
of the Hebrews under the phrase, ' doing despite unto 
the Spirit of grace.' ' These varied warnings all imply 
— what the Old Testament affirms — that God's Spirit 
' shall not always strive with man ; ' and intimate the 
danger, if the sinner does not cooperate with His prof- 
fered service, that He may leave the soul to perish mis- 
erably without His help. 

Many sinners concede this danger, but mistake the 
point where it chiefly threatens them. They imagine 
that it will only be after some fearful and agonizing 
struggle in which they have consciously fought against 
deep conviction, and deliberately decided to continue 
longer in the service of the world, that the Spirit will 
' take its sad flight.' Therefore, so long as they may 
live without such a struggle, they assume that they are 
safe. But that danger lies — if we may reason of the 
matter as the case of Lydia would seem to warrant — 
not in the last stages of the process of conversion, but 
in the first stages ; not among the violent, but among 
the gentle manifestations of its power over the soul, — 
when it has slid back one or two of the bolts of pas- 
sion and prejudice that have barred the heart against 
the Saviour, and is pleading very gently — so gently 
that you cannot distinguish its voice from the whispers 
of your own soul — for cooperation in opening wide the 
door to the entrance of the King of Glory. As Melville 
has faithfully said (^Sermons on Certain Less Promi- 



THE COXYEPvSION OF LTDIA. 127 

nent Facts, etc., etc., Ser. vi.) ^' What we would again 
and again impress upon you is, that you are not to 
think of recognizing the operations of the Spirit of God 
by any supernatural token, as though, whensoever that 
agent is at work in your breasts, you must be aware of 
his presence, and able to distinguish his movements 
from those of the conscience and the will. The secret 
uneasiness, the impulse to prayer, the sense of some- 
thing wrong, the disposition to hear the word of God — 
these may not startle you by their strangeness ; these 
may seem to you quite natural, as naturally produced 
as suggestions of an opposite character — but know ye 
of a truth, that these are what the Holy Ghost causes ; 
that these may be all which the Holy Ghost will cause ; 
and, therefore, that if ye will not yield to these, and 
will not act on these, there is a fearful probability of 
your being forsaken of God, and left to your own de- 
vices." 

Do not wait, then, for some great inward argument 
and agony, that may never come ! Listen to the still 
small voice that appeals within, and that may bring the 
only message which the Holy Ghost will ever send to 
you ! 

" There is a time, we know not when, 
A point, we know not where, 
That marks the destiny of men 
To glory, or despair. 

" There is a line, by us unseen, 
That crosses every path ; 
The hidden boundary between 
God's patience and his wrath. 



128 SERMONS. 

" How far may we go on in sin ? 
How long will God forbear ? 
Where does hope end, and where begin 
The confines of despair ? 

" An answer from the skies is sent : 
' Ye that from God depart. 
While it is called to-day, repent, 
And harden not your heart.' " 



YIIL 

GOOD INTENTIONS* 



MATT. XXI: 30. 
AND HE ANSWERED AND SAID, I GO SIR; AND WENT NOT. 

He meant well, but acted ill. He was intellectually 
satisfied that it was his duty to go work that day in his 
father's vineyard, in obedience to that father's com- 
mand ; and the heart drifted on the stream of the 
intellect, until he said, 'I go sir.' But there was 
an anchor of sinful disposition, and a cable of sinful 
habit lying out in the stream, which was overlooked, 
and before he had drifted far, it began to draw against 
the tide, and — he ' went not.' His good intention was 
frost-blasted in its bud. 

This man was not singular in this experience. Our 
Heavenly Father has multitudes of children who answer 
to his repeated calls for loving obedience, 'I go sir,' — 
yet make no corresponding effort to obey. There is an 
old proverb — whicli. for its truth, Solomon himself might 
have uttered — ' the way to hell is paved with good in- 



♦ WiUiams Hall, Oct. 16th, 1859. 

( 129 



130 SERMONS. 

tentions.' One thing is sure ; no man ever intended to 
go to hell. Xo man ever intended, in this world, to 
spend his declining years in the alms-honse, a benefi- 
ciary of public charity ; or to consign himself to the 
State Prison, or the halter, as a criminal against socie- 
ty ; or to lie down in the grave of the drunkard, or the 
debauchee. Nobody intends such things for himself. 
And when, on the road, he catches glimpses of these 
fearful endings, he is horror stricken ; he yields to the 
voice of friendly entreaty to return and reform his life. 
He thinks he will reform. He says ' I go sir.' But to 
slip down hill is easier than to climb up ; and in the 
end it too often proves that though he said ' I go sir,' 
he ' went not.' 

What is the explanation of this conduct, which is so 
clearly — to the disinterested observer — against that, 
which one would think it natural for every man to en- 
deavor, first of all, to secure ; namely : his own highest 
interest ? What is the philosophy of good intentions ; 
and what the ground of their so frequent failure to 
grow to the fruit of good life ? 

The Latins had a verb intendo^ which meant to stretch 
out, to turn toward ; and they often used it in connec- 
tion with their word signifying mind. Thus they would 
say ' quo animum intendis ? ' meaning, ' whither do you 
turn your mind ? ' that is : ' what are you thinking of? ' 
' what do you propose to do ? ' And after much usage 
of this sort, they came, for shortness, to use the verb 
alone, and would simply say ' quo intendis ? ' with the 
same idea. The word ' intend ' was taken into our lan- 
guage from the Latin, with this purport, and means, 
therefore, literally, to turn the mind toward any act. 



GOOD INTENTIONS. 131 

and thence to propose to perform that act. Thus the 
Psalmist says to the Lord, concerning wicked men, 
" they intended evil against thee." 

The word ' intention ' — being the noun of this verb 
' intend ' — is simply a description of the action of the 
verb ; and, taken in its secondary and usual sense, 
means the formation of a design to perform some act. 
That is, an "^ intention ' is that act of the mind by which 
we favorably contemplate the accomplishment of some 
end. In order to reach the end to which it refers, it 
must result in the adoption and use of suitable means — 
a step which the word ' purpose ' is oftener employed to 
designate ; as you might say of a man — ' he has long 
harbored the intention of taking the life of his enemy, 
and he has now gone so far as to provide himself with 
weapons for that purpose.^ ' Purpose ' is one step 
nearer action, than ' intention.' 

I am very anxious — for a reason which will appear 
before I get through — that this distinction should be 
perfectly clear before your minds, and I therefore beg 
to illustrate, as well as to define it. Take any simple 
and ordinary process of mental action, whicli we can 
make level to our comprehension in all its parts. 

Here — we will suppose — is a man, who, with the 
favoring Providence of God, has accumulated large 
wealth. He has risen from a low estate. His brothers, 
his only living relatives, are vicious and abandoned. 
He has no children. He has never married. As the 
years glide on, and his large wealth is more and more 
piled up upon itself, he often thinks of what sliall be 
done with it, after he is done with it. He intends to 
make a will, for he knows that, if he should die intes- 



132 SERMONS. 

tate, the law would transfer his gold to hands that 
would only become the more polluted by it. He intends 
to make a will ! But he has, somehow, become tainted 
with that singular superstition — which has had inex- 
plicable hold upon some otherwise strong minds — that 
making one's will is much like signing one's own death- 
warrant ; and, as he has no wish to die at present, and 
sees no immediate danger of dying, he lets his intention 
rest! 

He intends to make a will ! He has thought over all 
its items. He means to provide appropriately for his 
servants — they have served him long and well, and 
they deserve it. He means to give something to his 
profligate brothers — his natural heirs; not enough to 
sink them, by its probable gravitation, much deeper in 
the slough of vice ; enough to show that he has not for- 
gotten, nor despised them, because they are ' poor rela- 
tions.' He means to give something 'handsome' to the 
Church with which he has worshipped — possibly as a 
tacit confession that he has not enough interested him- 
self in its wants and welfare, in the former time. And 
then the bulk ; the mass of his fortune — as to that he is 
not yet quite clear. He wants to do something good 
with it. He has thought of a college ; a hospital ; an asy- 
lum for the aged ; a refuge for the penitent vicious. He 
has enough to fund either thoroughly, if he could only 
make up his mind which. 

He is full of good intentions. As he takes his daily 
walks through the streets, and any sight of poverty or 
distress touches his sympathy, he makes a mental note 
of it, and says to himself : ' I will do something for that 
matter in my will.' 



GOOD INTENTIONS. 133 

He intends to make a will ! Oh, yes ! If anybody 
were to say to him : ' My dear Sir, I fear you will die 
without doing as much for the public good with your 
large possessions, as you ought,' he would feel hurt by 
the suggestion ; he might reply, with something of 
sharpness in his tone : ' My friend, you misjudge me. 
I have thought much of this. I have been, for years, ar- 
ranging my plans with regard to the disposition of what 
Divine Providence has been pleased to give me as the 
reward of a life of honest and industrious toil. I intend 
to make a will, which shall testify my sense of my obli- 
gations to my fellow-creatures, and which shall put 
what is now in my hands, in the way of doing good for- 
ever, after I am gone.' And yet his friend's words 
make him uneasy. 

He goes home. Quickened in thought by what has 
been said to him, he actually raises the question, 
whether the time has not come to carry into effect what 
is now the one intention of his life. He looks in the 
glass. White hair — like the driven snow; yet still a 
fresh and ruddy face ! White hair ; yet still a form 
erect and athletic ! White hair ; yet still an unfading 
and piercing eye ! White hair ; yet still an arm that is 
strung with manly muscle ; fingers untremulous with 
the palsying touch of age ! No sign of death to-day ! 
No hint of death to-morrow ! 

He paces the floor, and reasons with himself. ' Very 
sad would it be if I should die, without having done 
this deed ! ' And he shudders with loathing as he 
thipks of the foul and pestilent abysses of infamy in 
which those treasures for which he has toiled, and which 
he loves — would be squandered, if the inexoraljlc law 

12 



134 SERMONS. 

of the land should distribute his millions among his 
heirs-at-law. And yet he shudders more as the shadow 
of that fell superstition falls upon him, and it seems to 
him as if to go into a lawyer's office, and ask him to 
write his last will and testament, would be unlocking the 
door into that damp and gloomy tomb, which is waiting 
for him, with horrid patience, at Mount Auburn ; that 
to talk it over with the attorney, would be getting into 
his very coffin on that sepulchral shelf; that signing 
the instrument would be like reaching out his hand to 
drive the last nail upon himself ! 

He cannot do it yet ! It is too much ! He will com- 
promise the matter. He will draw up a careful schedule 
of what he has, and accurate minutes of the disposition 
which he, on the whole, will make of it ; and thus defi- 
nitely decide that matter — and this he will keep lying 
by him, ready for any emergency. Doubtless he shall 
be sick before he dies — most men are — and he can 
send for the attorney after he has sent for the doctor, 
and seen trouble in his face. He is not ready to do it 
yet, but he intends to make a will ! 

His mind is relieved. He is quite happy again. He 
almost feels as if the terrible task were actually accom- 
plished ; since he now has so clear and so good an in- 
tention in regard to it. And he spends a few evenings 
very pleasantly at his private desk, in his own room, in 
arranging the prospectus of his posthumous generosity. 
He cannot, even, quite repress a pleasurable feeling, as 
he imagines to himself what the papers will say about 
him, as they promulge his magnificent bequests to pub- 
lic charities, after he has been carried to his long home. 

His minutes are finished ! He reads them over once 



GOOD INTENTIONS. 135 

more, and copies them in a clear, bold hand. He lays 
them in the upper drawer on the right hand side of his 
private desk ; — he can remember that^ if he is ever so 
sick ! It will be very little trouble for the lawyer to 
put it all into the correct shape, with such ample, and 
so clear, directions. It could be done in an hour or 
two, if there should be occasion for special haste. Of 
course he will have his usual legal adviser ; who has 
been his confidential friend for forty years. And, if 
there were haste, and he should be out of town ; why, 
he could trust his partner. And if (for he wishes to be 
prepared in thought, for every possible emergency) if, 
there should be a call for very great haste — say in the 
night — why, no doubt (with these ample preliminary 
papers) the young lawyer at the next door would do it 
better than nobody ! And so it is all settled. The 
upper drawer, on the right hand side : — Mr. So-and-So 
(his old friend) ; in case he is out of town, Mr. So-and- 
So (his old friend's partner) ; in case of the worst emer- 
gency, the young man at the next door ! 

It is all settled ! He intends to make a will ! 

He opens the drawer once more to make sure of no 
mistake, and slides it in with its papers as he desires 
them. He closes and locks the desk, draws his high- 
backed arm-chair round before the fender, stirs the fire, 
and, lying back at his ease rubs his hands with some- 
thing of the cheerful feeling of a duty done. He has 
not made his will ; but that intention which has been 
moving his mind toward that work for so many years, 
has come nearer to a settled purpose, than ever before. 
He FULLY intends to make a will ! And, as he sits 
there, it is a comfort to him. He wishes he did not 



136 SERMONS. 

have that superstitious dread of the work, wliicli keeps 
him from its full ultimation. He despises himself for 
having it. He wishes the will itself were there, signed, 
sealed, and witnessed, instead of the prospectus of it. 

He thinks, and thinks until, by and by, his thoughts 
grow misty ; his heavy eyelids droop ; he sleeps. 

He is in his own room, and for the night, and there 
is no intruder. 

He sleeps ; — the fire burns low ; — the midnight 
chimes. 

He sleeps ; — once, tvrice, thrice, four times, the bells 
break the silence of the darkness with their tolling notes. 
The dawn-streak tells where the east is. The bells 
sound like funeral bells — as when they toll for the 
dead in the little villages among the hills ; where death 
always brings general mourning I 

Are they funeral bells ? 

Look I cold is the grate ; cold the room. Is he cold ? 

Touch him : nay, why do you shrink back in terror, 
with a shriek between your teeth ? 

Cold ? Yes cold, dead — these hours — cold — stiflf ! 
No physician, no lawyer, not even any warning to the 
next door ! 

No ivill ! 

He intended to make a will ; he ahvays intended to 
make a will ; but there that sits which used to manifest 
him to human eye ; while — in this night time, noiseless- 
ly and without warning to himself or to the community 
whom he intended to bless by his posthumous generosity, 
— HE is gone, like a shadow flitting on the mountain side. 

There, in ' the upper drawer on the right hand side,' 
are the worthless mementos of his intended benefac- 



GOOD INTENTIONS. 13 



Oi 



tioiis ; but in this night-time there came, keeping even 
pace one step behind the death-angel, the shadowy 
majesty of the Law, and, as the last heart-throb stilled 
itself, and the last look of the departing soul was 
turned upon the white-haired form which it had so 
long tenanted and tasked, a hazy yet Herculean hand 
thrust itself through lock and bolt; grasping title 
deeds, and stock certificates, and notes, and bonds, and 
mortgages — that it might begin, with impartial divis- 
ion, to toss them into the worthless and wasting clutch 
of the dead man's kindred according to the flesh ! 

His intentions were good. He was a well-meaning 
man. He always meant to make a will — but ! 

He said ' I go, sir,' and ' went not ! ' 

And the path to that hell of eternal disappointment 
and disaster which has engulfed all his hopes and plans, 
was paved — day by day, day by day — with good inten- 
tions, that were trampled into nothingness under the 
persistent feet of one evil habit of his soul ! 

If the subject before us has been rightly opened and 
truthfully illustrated, we are now prepared safely to 
draw certain inferences, which may not be without 
practical value. 

1. AVe see the exact connection between intentions 
and acts. The mind goes through these several stages 
in reaching action : — Firsts it becomes conscious of 
the existence of whatever facts may exist which liave 
a bearing upon the question of action ; cither for, or 
against it. Second^ it so far becomes conscious of tlicir 
importance, as to be stimulated to attend to them, and 

12* 



138 SERMONS. 

to examine, accurately and thoroughly, their nature and 
force. Third^ in the process of this examination it be- 
comes interested ; the affections are excited by what- 
ever, of pleasure or good, those facts may offer as the 
reward of action. Fourth^ this excitement of the affec- 
tions moves the will to decide to act as they suggest. 
Fifths the will, thus acting, sets in motion whatever 
machinery of the complex being may be appropriate 
and necessary to effect the desired result. 

This last only is action. Consciousness, attention, 
interest, decision — these are the root, the stalk, the 
bud, the flower ; volition — concentrating all the forces 
of the soul upon immediate action — is the fruit ; the 
result and crown of all. 

Now, it is easy to see that mere intention — the say- 
ing ' I go, sir ; ' indefinitely, and in the general, without 
growing into that determination which will move the 
forces of the soul to the result — lies back of action in 
the region of imperfected preliminaries. Consciousness, 
and attention, and some excitement of the affections 
precede it ; that stronger excitement of the affections 
which will be sufficient to bring the will up to immedi- 
ate decision and action, must follow it. 

It is, therefore, a rudimentary and imperfect posture 
of mind. It is more than indifference ; it is less than 
choice. Like Agrippa under the preaching of the 
Apostle, it is ' almost persuaded.' Like that same 
Agrippa reverting to a death of hopeless heathenism, it is 
perfectly possible for it to be, in good faith, an intention, 
— ' almost persuaded ' yet not persuaded, to the end. 

2. We see in what way it is that the blossom of 
good intention so often falls, blasted, to the ground. 



GOOD I N T E X T I 'J N S . 139 



It is good as far as it goes. All its elements are 
sound. But an untimely frost kills its, as vet. imper- 
fect being. Some one passion pleads against it. Some 
one habit draws the soul a way from it. So silly a thing 
as the superstition that reasonable preparation for 
death, will bring on death, may chill out its life. And 
the desfre to sin a little longer : — a httle longer to put 
oflF what to him who loyes to sin, seems the eyil day 
of repentance — doubtless hinders the infinite majority 
of good intentions in our breasts from bearing fruit — 
in penitent, and beheying. and holy obedience — unto 
hfe eyerlasting. 

Finally. K the yiew we haye taken of the operations 
of the soul, be correct, it is easy to settle the moral 
value of intentions. Philologically speaking, any inten- 
tion is a good one, which is fixed, howeyer faintly, and 
transiently, upon good as its object. But from a moral 
point of yiew, no intention can be good which does not 
ultimate in good. 

The farmer may go out among his apple trees when 
the breath of spring is heayy with the odorous rich- 
ness of thefr blushing blossoms, and, as he sees the 
winsome prosjject of autumn fruit, and counts before- 
hand the probable bushels that are to drop from those 
boughs, through his hands, upon the winter market, 
he may say to himself: 'this is yery good; I did well 
to plant these trees : I did well to nurture them with 
care ; I shall now get my reward.' But. let him go 
out again, in a few days' time, to find the ground, not 
merely carpeted with fallen petals, but thickly besprink- 
led with perished germs — his winter harvest of golden 
apples become a spring harvest of blighted buds, — 



140 SERMONS. 

and he will say, ' those blossoms were not good ; they 
were a false pretence ; an utter treachery.' And if the 
experience of year after year convinces him that it is 
the nature of the species, and not the accident of a sea- 
son, which has led to the mishap, you will see him cut 
down those beautiful trees as remorselessly as if they 
were the most pestilent thorn-bushes that ever cum- 
bered his acres. 

So, what real goodness is there in any intention of 
good that does not grow into an act of goodness ? " By 
\h(d\T fruits ye shall know them." 

Here is a man who has become besotted with the 
desire for strong drink. Year by year it has crept its 
stealthy hand further and further along, until it has 
seized the tiller of his soul, and swept him round before 
the full gale of passion, straight for the reefs of death. 

His friends have pleaded with him many and many a 
time, and, feeling the force of their persuasions, he has, 
many and many a time, resolved to reform ; but ! His 
wife has pleaded with him. Oh, how the tears have 
streamed down her pallid cheeks, as she has begged him 
for his own sake, and for hers, for their dear children's 
sake, for the world's sake, for the sake of heaven, to 
break off that one bad habit of his soul. And his tears 
have fallen too, like rain, and he even said ^ I go ' — 
BUT ! — A few days and the old habit has come down on 
him like an armed man, and he is again in the gutter. 

Here is a moral and upright and most amiable citi- 
zen. The good Lord who loved him and gave himself 
to die for him, has pleaded with him for years to be not 
almost, but altogether, persuaded to become a Christian. 
He has thought it all over. It is better to be safe ! 



GOOD INTENTIONS. 141 

He can see that. It is better to have one's preparation 
for all that is beyond, complete and entire, lacking 
nothing, before the death-angel comes knocking at the 
door ! He can see that. It is better to have peace of 
conscience, than remorse of conscience ; to feel that one 
is living as one ought to live, rather than dying a living 
death of sin ! He can see that. 

And when he thinks of Christ's redeeming love ; and 
of Heaven's glorious solicitations ; and of that sweet 
sunshine of rest that remaineth, far above this region of 
storm-cloud and tempest, he feels won toward it. It is 
blessed ; better than this ; better than any thing here ; 
better than any thing else any where ! He can see that ! 

He resolves to be a Christian. He says ' I go sir.' 
But ! Something hinders to-day, and something hin- 
ders to-morrow ; and something hinders the next day, 
and all the days ; and so he drifts along, — resolving 
and re-resolving, and dying at last the same ! 

Can there be any question of the moral value, or 
rather the utter want of value, of such ' good ' inten- 
tions, that amount to nothing good ? What better have 
they made the drunkard ; what better the procrasti- 
nating sinner? No true man can fail to answer — 
' no better.' Intentions are not good that do not grow 
into good action ! Doubtless they are often worse than 
no intentions at all — for they mislead the soul. 

Take care, then ! Make good resolutions ; but keep 
them, in the strength of Christ, and for the love you 
bear your own immortal interests. 



IX. 

GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICK' 



MATT. XXV: 23. 

WELL DONE, GOOD AXD FAITHPUL SERVANT : THOU HAST BEEN FAITH- 
FUL OVER A FEW THINGS, I WILL MAKE THEE RULER OVER MANY 
things; ENTER THOU INTO THE JOT OF THY LORD. 

Blessed are they who, at Heaven's gatej have heard 
these words sweetly falling from the lips of our Lord 1 
Blessed, beyond our most adventurous imagination, 
they who, emerging through the momentary lethargy of 
death, have recognized these joy-giving syllables as their 
first consciousness of eternity with Christ ! How keen 
is their appreciation of the fewness of the things con- 
cerning which they have been ' faithful ; ' how over- 
whelming their conception of the infinite mercy of God, 
abounding over and over their ill desert ; how exquisite 
their sense of that ' joy of the Lord,' into whose eternal 
ecstasy they are now made welcome 1 To their senses 
— purged of all worldliness, and quickened by celestial 
light — how mean appear their earthly sacrifices ; how 
feeble their earthly faith ; how faltering their earthly 
example ! How they almost desire to live their proba- 

* Pine Street Church, Sept. 2d, 1855. 
( 142 ) 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 143 

tion over again that they might render better service 
unto Him who loved them and gave himself to die for 
them I How thev long that those beloved ones whom 
they have left behind for a little season^ should Uft up 
their eves and enlarge their hearts to the comprehension 
and reception of those spiritual urgencies, which, if they 
could but gTasp them, would so deepen and enrich 
their piety ; so quicken and beautify their life ! With 
what eager solicitude we imagine them looking from 
the clouds upon the progress of the Redeemer's king- 
dom ; exulting in its triumphs, lamenting over the mis- 
takes of its champions, and mourning their mutual dis- 
trasts and conflicts, yet ever striking their golden harps 
with jubilant melody when even one soul repenteth I 
With what tender interest must this great cloud of wit- 
nesses behold these sacred Sabbath scenes, and if we 
could catch their celestial tones, how earnestly should 
we not hear them saying : ' Beloved, be dihgent, prayer- 
ful, humble ; remember Christ ; let not earth seduce 
you : Heaven is expecting you ; and our Lord waiteth 
to say also unto you, as (Oh, miracle of grace I) he hath 
said to us : well done good and faithful servants ; enter 
into the joy of your Lord.' 

In sympathy with such thoughts as these, let us in- 
quire, this morning, what are some of the essential 
elements of good and faithful Christian service ? such 
service as Christ demands ; the world waits for ; Heaven 
rewards. 

I. I answer, firsts great intellectual pmcer is not one 
of those elements. 

That i?, the amount of intellect which a man po<- 



144 SERMONS. 

sesses, provided he have enough to involve capacity and 
insure responsibility, does not fix the quality of his 
Christian service. Whether he have much mind or lit- 
tle mind, he may be alike ' good and faithful.' The vio- 
let which the dew-drop bends to the earth, and the oak 
which defies the leveling hurricane, are not alike in 
strength, but one is just as truly alive as the other ; one 
just as truly beautiful as the other ; one just as good 
and faithful in its appointed work for their common 
Creator, as the other. And if a man cast in that great 
mold which God uses when he needs a Milton, or a 
Bacon, or a Franklin, or a Webster on the earth, were 
to devote every energy, and every affection, and every 
hour of his mighty life to the divine service ; that large 
obedience — though broader in its earthly scope, and 
mightier in its earthly use — would be in reality no 
better, and no more faithful, than that of the humblest 
cottager who, with the same entireness of love and en- 
deavor, toils through his brief and narrow path, making 
the most of his one talent until death. No man is 
authorized to say that, in the eye of Jehovah, an ele- 
phant is any better than a.n animalcule : Chimborazo 
than a grain of sand ; the Atlantic any better than a 
rain-pool ; Niagara any better than a rill. ' He hath 
made every thing beautiful in his time,' and as he 
does not ask the animalcule to be an elephant, but 
to be worthily and faithfully itself, so he does not ask 
any man of low capacity to be an intellectual giant, but 
to be faithful to himself, and his Creator, as he is, and 
where he is. And we are not authorized to infer that 
God takes any less pleasure in the perfect obedience 
and affectionate, though limited, activity, of the poor 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 145 

and ignorant, than he takes in the larger tribute of 
those to whom he has intrusted larger forces of charac- 
ter. Nay, it may even be questionable whether we do 
not read in those instincts of our own hearts, which 
lead us to accept, with the tenderest and most de- 
lighted affection, the love and obedience of the feeblest 
of the little ones clustering round our firesides, the 
hint that our Eternal Father may give his heartiest 
heavenly welcomes, not to those who have had most 
to work with, but to those who have done most with 
least capacity. 

The latest and most learned writer upon the nature 
and philosophy of the ocean, has settled it that it is not 
the great whales, who flounder through the floods as if 
an island had broken from its moorings and become 
instinct with vibratory life, but the little, almost invis- 
ible, polypi, working away patiently upon some one 
spot at the bottom of the deep sea, which most affect 
the character and currents of the ocean, and which even 
help to regulate the climate of the earth. Each minute 
moUusk continually abstracts from the sea-water, solid 
matter, from which he secretes his coral cell. In doing 
so, he destroys the equilibrium of the entire ocean, — 
for he has altered the specific gravity of that portion 
of water from which he has borrowed his carbonate of 
lime. Now lighter than before, it must rise and flow 
off* until it regains its normal proportions. Myriads of 
these little workers thus create currents in the deep, 
which put in motion the whole sea from top to bottom, 
from the equator to the poles. And while doing this, 
they build continents and deposit islands — in a merely 
incidental way — beside ; teaching us that in nature and 

13 



146 SERMONS. 

grace alike, God has ' chosen the weak things of the 
world, to confound the things which are mighty.' 

We exclude then, wholly, from the essentials of good 
and faithful Christian service, the idea of eminent intel- 
lectual strength. He who knows enough to know God, 
and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, knows enough to 
be found faithful unto death, and to receive the crown 
of life. 

II. We exclude again, in the second place, the idea 
of eminent social position, from these essential elements. 

Many a man thinks to excuse himself from any special 
responsibility in regard to the service of God in his gen- 
eration, on the ground of what he considers his uninflu- 
ential position in society. He may be a young farmer, 
or mechanic, or merchant's clerk, known to but few 
people, and imagining himself comparatively very unim- 
portant in the eye of those few. He thinks, if he were 
a clergyman, a lawyer, a physician, a wholesale mer- 
chant, a fluent speaker, a ready writer, a person of 
wealth, that then, he should feel great religious re- 
sponsibility ; then he should be able to do something 
for God ; but, as it is, what can he do ? 

He ? He can do just what God made him to do ; 
put him there, that he might do ; is waiting for him to 
do. Just that ; all that. Nor are God's behests ever 
insignificant ; they borrow greatness from Him from 
whom they proceed — from the eternities on which they 
take hold ; and they are not to be despised as insignifi- 
cant, even when they make little show in human eyes. 
The under side of the western sea, through a degree of 
longitude is sometimes sown thick with jagged reefs — 
which come to the surface only in a single point, and 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 147 

that point, seen afar, may look like a bit of refuse float- 
ing on the tide. 

What if the sunbeam were to refuse to shine upon 
the great watery wastes of the far Atlantic and Pacific, 
because only here and there, at remotest intervals, some 
white sail or smoking funnel, reveals the presence of 
animate intelligence ; because it has a bad social posi- 
tion, and is in danger of being unknown ? The natural- 
ist will tell us that if the solar ray were lifted thus from 
the sea, the immense evaporation from its surface — 
amounting, as we are told, to a literal skimming of the 
ocean to the depth of three quarters of an inch daily, or 
of more than twenty feet annually — would cease ; all 
the atmospheric phenomena would become disarranged ; 
fertile climates would be rendered arid and insupporta- 
ble, and the whole earth would be out of joint. 

The truth is, in nature, that not one form of existence, 
however insignificant, not one species of activity, how- 
ever humble, not one particle of matter, has being in 
this material universe, without its appointed office, — an 
office honorable to itself, useful to many, vital to the 
general plan. 

And just so it is with men. The common soldier is 
as really essential to a conquering army, as its com- 
mander-in-chief; the laborer who, with smutty hand 
and sweaty brow, splits and heaves out of the Carrara 
quarries the white marble block, is just as really and 
honorably essential to the graceful beauty of the com- 
pleted Yenus or Apollo, as the aesthetic eye and creative 
brain of the sculptor, whose name it will bear down to 
the admiration of the ages. 

No man can so isolate himself from other men as to 



148 SERMONS. 

say with the least show of justice, that, as compared 
with others, his social position is less influential than 
theirs. No man knows whose shoulder God will choose 
to be the fulcrum of the next good work that is to be 
done in the earth, whether his own or another man's. 
When Jehovah wanted Xew England settled with Chris- 
tian influences, he called neither wise nor mighty in 
the eye of King James and his court. He passed by 
Westminster and St. Paul's ; by Lincoln's Inn and 
Temple Bar ; by Cambridge and Oxford ; and, in an 
obscure hamlet of Nottinghamshire, he took an unsur- 
pliced clerk, a postmaster, and a few humble farmers, 
and exposed them to the persecutions of the wicked, 
until they grew to be the Christian statesmen and illus- 
trious founders of our mighty liberties. When he 
wanted the Pilgrim's Progress written, ignoring that 
glorious constellation of poets and prose writers which 
made that " the Golden Age of England," he so used 
an unlettered tinker, that the great thoughts of Bacon 
and Milton in all their glory of language are not arrayed 
like one of his. And so when God desired — in our 
own time — to bring out into clearer light and more im- 
pressive reaUty, the power of prayer and personal effort 
in saving men, he went by our pulpits, and over our 
higher ranks of education and wealth, and called Har- 
lan Page from the trade of a house carpenter, and the 
meager learning of a common school of fifty years ago, 
and made him the direct instrument in his hand of the 
conversion of more than one hundred souls, and the 
centre of widening agencies of evangelization, whose 
entire value the Judgment only can disclose. 

His command — go labor to-day in my vineyard, is 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 149 

addressed to every ear that has sense enough to compre- 
hend it, and vital energy enough to obey it. Accord- 
ing to what a man hath, and not according to what he 
hath not — is his demand ; will be his final reckoning. 
And as Louis Napoleon sent the same grand cross of 
knighthood to the General commanding his own army 
in the Crimea, and to a common soldier in the English 
rank and file, in testimony of the admiration entertained 
by the French people for their respective bravery ; so the 
earthly position of the soldier of the cross will not affect 
the divine estimate and reward of his labor, whatsoever 
it may be. We exclude, then, from the essentials of 
good faithful Christian service, any consideration of tlie 
social position of the individual believer. So, once more, 
we exclude again, 

III. In the third place ^ the idea of an extended period 
of service. 

Some men begin to love God and obey him very late 
in life. Others begin early and are early taken hence. 
So many lovely Christians enter Heaven in youth, as to 
keep us often thinking of the old Greek maxim — 
' whom the Gods love, die young,' — as to make us 
sadly respond to Wordsworth's lament : 

"The good die first, 
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, 
Burn to the soc"ket." 

But we ought not to mourn over the early dead in 
Christ, as if they had not been permitted by him to 
render good and faithful service, for their life here is, 
in reality, to be taken as only a portion of their true 
life — a life continued and perfected above. Indeed, it 

13* 



150 SERMONS. 

may be because the Saviour sees peculiar adaptations 
for usefulness — remarkable indications of zeal and 
ability to serve him — that he takes a young Christian 
from the cares and dangers of this world, and employs 
him in those more grateful and mightier labors which 
constitute the employments of Heaven. 

Nor is it always true that the brief labor here of those 
whom God takes early to their reward, is therefore un- 
important as compared even with the more extended 
service of others. One of the most godly and revered 
of the Xew England divines of the last century, sat 
down at fourscore, and sadly wrote thus of himself: — 
'^ it has been a matter of doubt and discouragement to 
me, that I have had little or no success by my preach- 
ing, in being made the instrument of awakening and 
converting sinners. But very few instances of this 
have come to my knowledge, and these not very re- 
markable nor clear." Such was God's way with this, 
his servant, who had ably preached sound doctrine from 
a clear head and a broken and contrite heart, for the 
space of fifty-eight years. On the other hand, there is 
reason to believe, that the brief service of a young la- 
borer, who went from the Seminary and his orduiation 
to the tomb, with the interval of only four months and 
eleven days — whose entire ministry included only six 
Sabbaths upon which it did not storm — was blest to 
such quickening of saints, and such conviction of sin- 
ners, as made great rejoicing in Heaven, and great bet- 
terment on earth. 

Who will undertake to say that Henry Martyn would 
have accomplished more for the general good by doub- 
hng his thirty-two years of life ? or McCheyne his 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 151 

twentv-nine ? or Lamed and Bradford Homer their 
twenty-four ? or Mary Tan Lennep her twenty-three ? 
or the Httle Osage captive, her nine ? How much more 
may such minds accomplish by the wide transfusion of 
their fragrant graces in the simple story of their lives, 
and the simple pathos of their pleas for Chi^st. through 
thousands of dwellings, and through scores of genera- 
tions, than if they had longer remained in person with 
us. In the almost prophetic words of one of the httle 
cluster I have named, ^' death disentangles the spirit 
from time and space, the present barriers of its influ- 
ence, and makes it cross oceans, and pervade the earth, 
by its startling suddenness, so quickening its power, 
that it shall surpass that of the living voice." 

Viewed in relation to any common ideas of the com- 
pleteness of earthly life, our Saviour's abode here was 
prematurely terminated. But a single one of his disci- 
ples saw the day of gray hairs, and yet how complete 
and glorious their service I 

" Oh ! not by hours, or fiiU or few. 

Our gracious Lord the toil computes, — 
Some, ere exhales the early dew, 

At mom retire with sheaves and fruits.'* 

Not ' how long,' but ' how much ; ' — not ' in what 
position,' but ' how faithfully ; ' — not ' with how many 
talents,' but ' with how much love,' — will our master 
question his children as to the details of their service 
here, when they go up to seek their reward. And let 
us doubt not that the faithful, simple Shepherd of Sah's- 
bury Plain shall there outrank many great Christian 
Philosophers, and many an Archbishop of Canterbury 



152 SERMONS. 

shall find that the least Sabbath School trained orphan 
in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he ! 

Having thus thrown out from the elements of good 
and faithful Christian service, all reference to the 
amount of intellect,, the social position, or the period of 
labor of the believer, I proceed to remark, 

IV. In the fourth place^ that those elements include 
the idea of the entire devotion to God^ of every power 
which is possessed. 

The complete circle of the interior nature must be 
consecrated to Jehovah. Every faculty of the mind 
must be used as God commands. Every affection of 
the heart must be his, and his for use^ to the exclusion 
of all lesser objects as ends of life. As the earth sweeps 
round the sun, and the moon round the earth — both 
motions at the same time harmoniously working, and 
interworking, and interdependent — so regenerate man 
and man revolve peacefully and justly around each 
other, while at the same time together obeying that 
mightier impulse which impels and defines their obedi- 
ent circuit in the great orbit of duty around the central 
throne of the Almighty ! And as every atom of that 
dust of which the earth is builded, yields like obedience 
with every other, to the same centripetal and centrifu- 
gal laws, and so both the roundness of the globe, and 
the integrity of its orbit, are preserved ; in like man- 
ner is it requisite that every atom of our manhood com- 
bine with every other in complete and symmetric alle- 
giance to him who hath said, " thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." 

There is no such thing known to Christianity as hold- 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 153 

ing on upon heaven with one hand, and upon the earth 
with the other. Many men have tried it to their earthly 
discomfort and eternal disappointment. '' He that is 
not for me is against me, he that gathereth not with 
me scattereth abroad." A divided heart is a weak and 
sorrowful one. It has neither the comfort of this world, 
nor the joy of the next. It is afraid to sin much, lest it 
be lost. Yet it wants to sin a little, for the comfort of 
some cherished transgression. And so it oscillates be- 
tween what it knows to be wrong, and what it fears 
cannot be right ; the Bible threatening, conscience ac- 
cusing, and the Spirit reproving, imtil it goes up into 
the clear regions of thorough repentance and entire 
consecration, or downward into the abyss of persistent 
wrong and resultant ruin. 

He who professes to be a Christian, or who wants to 
be a Christian, ought to know that every argument 
which exacts any obedience to God, exacts complete 
obedience ; that it is impossible to render a reason for 
any selfish withholding in any department of that nature, 
for all of which Christ died, and all of which — as essen- 
tial alike to the honesty of its surrender, and any effi- 
ciency in his service — he demands as his right for the 
satisfaction of the travail of his soul. 

When, then, there is in the mind no thought, in the 
heart no love, in the will no purpose, that is not touched 
and pervaded by reverence for Jehovah, and affection 
to him, and sympathy with his cause, then, the entire 
circle of the humanity within being consecrated, imag- 
inations are cast down, and every higli thing that cxaltcth 
itself against the knowledge of God, and every tliouglit 
is brought into captivity to the obedience of ( lirist, and 



164 SERMONS. 

the first essential element of good and faithful Christian 
service is realized within. 

V. Another element essential to such service is, that 
this complete devotion of the powers to God, be uninter- 
mitted, 

" Ye did run well," said Paul to the Galatians, " who 
did hinder you that ye should not obey [continue to 
obey] the truth ? " The perseverance of the saints may 
be demonstrable beyond debate, and yet it must remain 
true that no individual believer is sure of permanence 
in his Christian course except as that permanence be- 
comes the result of daily prayer, and hourly trust, and 
ceaseless endeavor. 'Thou standest by faith — be not 
high minded, but fear.' 'Be diligent — for the adver- 
sary, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he 
may devour.' What mean these urgent counsels, and 
such as these, if there is no danger even after the con- 
secration of every power has been commenced, that it 
will be intermitted and the process cease ? 

There is danger, danger on every hand. It is human 
nature to tire of progress in one direction. And when 
that progress is arduous, many and many will be the 
temptations to turn aside into pleasanter paths. The 
adversary rages when he sees a Christian giving his 
whole heart to God, for he feels that his time is short. 
Hence the urgency of the exhortations to constant 
watchfulness ; the frequency and minuteness of those 
commands which imply a continual danger of apostasy. 

There is something inexpressibly lovely in a constant, 
consistent Christian life, that resembles God and Christ, 
in the permanence, as well as the quality of its holy 
emotions ! How it cheers a pastor to be permitted 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 155 

to lean upon such ones in his charge — to know that 
whoever else may be dull and sleepy, their eye will 
greet him and the truth he brings, with the same beam- 
ing welcome, whether it be light or dark, in the Churcli 
or in the world ; that, whoever else may be silent, their 
voices will speak always the same words of charity and 
cheer ; that whoever else may be cometary in their rev- 
olution about the central sun of the moral universe — 
one brief occasional moment in blazing contact, and the 
rest of the time whirling invisibly away through the cold 
regions of spiritual darkness — they are fixed stars in 
his firmament, shining there ever, with the same serene 
and blessed light ! 

We know the mathematical truth, that to get the en- 
tire contents of any parallelogramic field, or figure, it 
is just needful to multiply its length by its breadth, 
which gives the area. So, to get the area and exactness 
of good and faithful Christian service, we need to mul- 
tiply the entireness of the consecration of the faculties 

— (which we might call the breadth), by the entireness 
of the duration of life (which we might call the length) 

— and then, from both, — when every power is sancti- 
fied in every moment — we obtain that obedience with 
which God is well pleased. ''No man,'- said Pay son, 
" can have any evidence that he is a servant of Christ, 
any further than he obeys the will of Christ ; and no 
man can have any evidence that he obeys the will of 
Christ in one particular, unless he sincerely and strenu- 
ously aims to obey in every particular ; for the will of 
Christ is OTze." 

VI. Another element of good and faithful Christian 
service^ is wisdom^ superadded to complete and perma- 
nent consecration. 



156 SERMONS. 

The Church is to be the pillar and ground of the 
truth. Christians are set to win souls to the Redeemer, 
until the kingdoms of this world are become the king- 
doms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign 
from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the 
earth. But he that winneth souls must be wise. Not 
mere words — however truthful and well meant — but 
words fitly spoken^ are ' like apples of gold in pictures 
of silver.' The best intended labor, if ill-timed and ill- 
aimed, may work harm instead of help. That may be 
faithfully conceived service which defeats the very end 
it seeks by the clumsy manner of its kindness ; but it 
is not ' good and faithful service.' Sometimes a pastor 
of genuine piety, wide culture, uncommon sense, and 
earnest consecration, has toiled in some ' hard field,' 
year after year, in sadness, because almost no visible 
harvest has followed his sowing ; while some unlettered 
laborer, by his side, to whom God has given a limberer 
tongue, a more pliant gesture, and a larger measure of 
common sense, has gathered converts by companies. 

John Newton and John Bunyan could not have in- 
terchanged functions. George Whitefield could not 
have taken the place of George Washington, nor could 
Washington, ^ith all his majestic greatness, have plowed 
white furrows down the smutty cheeks of the English 
colliers, from the overflowing fountains of the eye, as 
Whitcfield did. William Cowper and Samuel Hopkins 
are both precious names to the Church ; but they would 
be names long forgot, if Hopkins had sung, and Cowper 
sat down to the metaphysic folio. 

Nor is this matter of wisdom in the direction of the 
holy energies of life, a matter of grave import merely to 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 137 

those to whom God has given uimsual intellectual 
power. It involves for every follower of Christ the dif- 
ference between comparatively wasted, and well spent 
days. The humblest of us are conscious of painfully 
frequent failures in work which we have set our hands 
unto to do, which reflection testifies were the result of 
hasty and injudicious activity, of ill-considered and 
soon regretted speech. Doubtless God desires to have 
each of us become just that which, in his gift of power 
to us, he has fitted us to be. He has cast no two in 
the same mold. He seems to seek infinite individual 
diversity under the one great unity of humanity. And 
it is the duty of each human creature — under His gen- 
eral commands — to follow that specific law of develop- 
ment which is revealed within himself by the capabilities 
divinely implanted there. Faculties misapplied are, in 
great part, wasted. There is no need to take a locomo- 
tive to draw a hand-car. It is sad that good men 
should ever make mistakes. It is very sad that they 
should so often make them, and make such needless 
ones ! 

As God looks down out of heaven upon his physical 
world, he sees every atom of matter — wherever placed 
and however endowed — mutely, wisely, working for 
him, in precise accordance with his own plan, and 
wish. Every daisy on earth is just such a daisy as he 
wants it to be ; every wheeling globe, poised glittering 
in air, just such a globe ! From Sirius, whose lurid 
splendor flashes like evening sunlight across the sum- 
mer heaven, to the microscopic moss-blossom which 
yearly perfects itself and then decays upon the inacces- 
sible aig'uille of the bare granite Alp ; lie beholds 

14 



158 SERMONS. 

every thing — planet or plant — fulfilling in beautiful 
exactness, and with afiectionate and unswerving preci- 
sion, the identical purpose which he had in view in its 
creation. Man — intelligent, immortal; for whom all 
was made ; for whom Christ died ; with whom the Holy 
Spirit pleads ; — man alone compels himself, by his own 
sin, to be ' a jarring and discordant thing amid this gen- 
eral dance and minstrelsy.' He will not love his kind 
Heavenly Father by nature, and when that Father in- 
terposes by miraculous activities, to wake up and warm 
his sluggish spirit, he refuses to be moved, and prefers 
the pleasures of sin for a season, to the joy of God here 
and forever. And when his compassionate and un- 
wearied Creator ' compels him to come in,' he often 
seems to seize every occasion to backslide, blunders 
over the wall of rectitude at every by-way ; and even 
when by the Holy Spirit quickened to endeavor at en- 
tire and constant consecration, continually mistakes in 
his attempts at duty, and puts his hand to the wrong 
task, and wastes his labor, and wearies and disheartens 
himself. 

Oh, how the inanimate things of God rebuke him ! 
One might almost heartily say, with old Henry Vaughan, 

" I would I were a stone, or tree, 
Or flowre by pedigree, 
Or some poor highway herb, or spring 
To flow, or bird to sing ! 

• ••••• 

" Thy other creatures in this scene, 
Thee only aym and mean ; 
Some rise to seek thee, and, with heads 
Erect, peep from their beds : 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SER7ICE. 159 

Others, whose birth is in the tomb 
And cannot quit the womb, 
Sigh there, and grone for Thee, 
Their Hberty. 

" let not me do lesse ! shall they 
Watch, while I sleep or play ? 
Shall I Thy mercies still abuse 
With fancies, friends, or newes ? 
O brook it not ! Thy blood is mine, 
And my soul should be Thine ! " 

Let me finally name, — in addition to the entire, and 
permanent, and wise consecration of every power to God 
— as the crowning element of good and faithful Chris- 
tian ser\dce5 

VII. The constant remembrance of Jesus, 

This completes, because it includes and perfects, all. 
The memory of what our Lord did, and said, and suf- 
fered for us, is full of instruction for our ignorance, of 
strength for our feebleness, of consolation for our sorrow. 
Walking along the thorny path of life before us, he has 
left us an ensample, that we should follow his steps, 
walking ' even as he walked.' And the thought that he 
has fought all our battles of temptation before us, and 
is ready to fight them over again in us, is calculated to 
fill the soul with a confident courage that can do all 
things through his strengthening. 

How many a timorous woman has defied the utmost 
horror of the king of terrors, through her simple faith 
in a Christ that has died before, for her — robbing even 
the grave of its gloom, and robing its chill sod in flowers 
of immortal gladness — her stiffening lips faltering forth 
that swan-song of the Christian : — 



160 SERMONS. 

"Jesus can make a dying bed 

Feel soft as downy pillows are, 
While on his breast I lean my head, 

And breathe my life out sweetly there ! " 

He who loves Jesus with — what I may, I trust, with- 
out irreverence, make most intelligible by the expres- 
sion — a strong personal affection; who delights to 
linger over the pages of the Evangelists, and make real 
to himself every scene depicted there ; — by the faith 
of imagination, and the imagination of faith — seeing 
Christ instruct the ignorant, and comfort the troubled, 
and heal the sick, and raise the dead ; hearing Christ 
speak to the disciples those wondrous beatitudes, to the 
woman at the well-side those inspiring truths, to the 
Scribes and Pharisees those faithful and portentous re- 
bukes ; will find himself daily becoming more and more 
conscious of a personal relation to his Saviour as the 
great Captain of his salvation ; and will find himself 
borne along to victory in all his spiritual conflicts, by 
the tide of enthusiasm which the thought of Christ cru- 
cified raises within his breast. 

When Napoleon was on his return from Elba, march- 
ing at the head of a little handful of troops toward 
Paris ; on the 7th of March, he approached Grenoble, 
where six thousand picked troops, under General 
Marchand, had been strongly posted to oppose his fur- 
ther progress. To offer resistance would have been 
utter madness ! 

Commanding his body-guard to halt, the returning 
exile rode calmly forward, with two or three attendants, 
until he arrived within a hundred paces of those glit- 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERYICE. 161 

tering weapons which were waiting to be leveled at his 
heart. Throwing his bridle rein to one of his compan- 
ions, he then dismounted, crossed his arms upon his 
breast in his characteristic and familiar attitude, and 
slowly advanced, unprotected and alone, until he con- 
fronted the enemy, at the distance of only ten paces. 
The Bourbon commander ordered his men to ' make 
ready.' Every musket went to its shoulder, every eye 
glanced along its barrel as if waiting only the utter- 
ance of the fatal order. There he stood in that same 
gray coat and cocked hat which had led those very men 
over so many victorious fields — not a muscle moving 
on his face ; he, one man alone, they, six thousand men 
with their weapons leveled at his heart. The word 
was given to ' fire,' — if there had been one man of that 
great company willing to obey, he might have earned a 
Dukedom ; almost the fortune of a Rothschild with his 
bullet. But there they all stood — spell-bound ! 

Napoleon advanced until the leveled weapons almost 
touched his breast, and uncovering his heart, said in 
those tones which once heard were never forgotten — 
" Soldiers ! if there is one among you who wants to kill 
me, let him do it — here I am ! " 

A moment's stillness — then fell the point of one 
musket, then of another, and another ; tears streaming 
down the cheeks of those hardy veterans ; until the 
shout of '' Vive I'Empereur ! " rose like the roar of a 
hurricane upon the air. 

They thought of Egypt and Syria ; they had followed 
that man at Marengo and Austerlitz ; they had con- 
quered with him at Jena and Areola ; they liad threaded 
the Alps in the teeth of winter, and crossed the bridge 

14* 



162 SERMONS. 

of Lodi in the face of murderous batteries, because they 
beheved in him ; they had bled with him at Jaffa, and 
retreated with him from Moscow — he was their gen- 
eral, their hero, their Napoleon ! He might have shot 
down the whole six thousand, before one of them would 
have lifted his musket for harm against him ! 

Such power over our human nature has confidence in, 
and enthusiasm for, a leader whom we love — even 
when that love is alloyed and weakened by many frail- 
ties in the object which calls it forth. Let but that en- 
thusiasm be awakened vividly toward Him who is ' the 
chiefest among ten thousand, and the one altogether 
lovely,' and what can hinder it from making us all 
Christian heroes ; equal to every exigency of the 
Church and the world — who, through faith, will sub- 
due kingdoms, work righteousness, out of weakness be 
made strong, and turn to flight the armies of the 
aliens ! 

" Let me but hear my Saviour say, 
' Strength shall be equal to thy day;' 

I can do all things — or can bear 

AU suffering, if my Lord be there^ 

Brethren, these four — consecration, compelling every 
faculty into God's service ; during every moment of life ; 
judiciously applied ; in the constant memory of Jesus : 
these four — the soul wholly working ; ever working ; 
wisely working ; working in Christ — are those great 
essentials of good and faithful Christian service, which 
are most urgent in their claim upon our recognition, 
and which, having made it faithful unto death, will en- 
title it to that crown of righteousness which the Lord, 



GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVICE. 163 

the righteous judge, shall give, at that day, unto all 
them that love his appearing. 

Do they seem beyond your reach ? 

No ! they are not beyond our reach. That is their 
glory, and beauty ! Like God's air, and God's earth, 
and God's water — which are near to all his creatures, 
however poor and desolate they may be beside — these 
essential elements of acceptable service, and so of celes- 
tial blessedness, are in the power of every human soul. 
An acorn-cup can be just as truly brimful as Lake 
Superior ; and the weakest human vessel that has yet 
life and coherence enough to bind it together into a 
responsible agent, can be just as really brimful of love 
and service to the loving and condescending God, as 
the loftiest human intellect, and the largest human 
heart. 

God asks no man to make bricks without straw ; but 
he does ask us each to do just what we can do^ for him. 
He has given to us each some intellect, and some posi- 
tion in society, and he will give us each some length 
of labor ; and, if we do not live to be as old as the patri- 
archs, and are never reckoned among its great ones by 
our generation — nay, if we are even so obscure that 
every thing quickly forgets that we ever lived after we 
are gone, except old Mother Earth holding our mortality 
in her lap until the resurrection trump — no matter for 
that! We shall be held responsible for what we — 
such as we are — might have done ; and be judged for 
what we — such as we are — have done ; each exactly 
according to God's gift of power to us, and our use of 
that gift. 

No man can say that this will not be infinitely just ! 



164 SERMONS. 

And this brings within reach of us all, every essential 
of ^ good and faithful service.' It is possible for every- 
one of us to give all his powers henceforth, continuously, 
wisely, in loving imitation of his Lord, to the Divine 
service. 

Oh ! if we would do so ; if but the membership of this 
one Christian Church would, now and henceforth, do 
only this, — each his own simple, clear, acknowledged 
duty — it seems to me that we might almost go forth at 
once to find the Millennial roses budding in all this des- 
ert of earth. 

And this, at least, would be secure ; that when we 
each should come to the last of earth, we too should 
hear that pleasant voice, whose farewell tones still re- 
verberate from Olivet, saying even unto us : " well done 
good and faithful servant ; enter thou into the joy of 
thy Lord." 



X. 

FAITH THE [MEASURE OF SUCCESS* 



MATT. IX: 29. 
ACCOEDIXG TO TOUE FAITH BE IT UyTO YOU. 

I AM sitting in an npj)€r chamber reading, when 
some one bursts into the room with the crv, • the house 
is on fire : the house is on fire 1 ' 

I look up : I say, ' is it, what makes you think so ? ' 

He answers : - do you not see the smoke ? do you 
not hear the alarum of the bells ? the rush of the multi- 
tude ? do you not see the flame itself curling up from 
below ? ' 

I answer : ' ye^ : I think I do ; you are, undoubtedly 
right ; I judge the house to be, unc[uestionably, on fire,' 
— and — turn over to the next page, and go c^uietly on 
with my book. 

That is belief. I sincerely believe the house is on 
fire. I have the evidence of sense. I do not entertain 
a doubt of it. But I keep on reading. That, I say, is 
belief — in a fact simply as a fact. 



♦ Pine Street Church, April llth, 1858. 

(165) 



166 SERMONS. 

But, suppose I answer by springing to the door, and, 
having at one ghince comprehended the circumstances 
and their bearing upon my destiny, snatch my two or 
three most cherished treasures, and leap down into the 
smoke upon the stairs, and hurry from the danger be- 
fore it is too late — that is faith ! 

Belief, then, is simple conviction that any given as- 
sertion, is the assertion of a fact. Faith is that belief 
influencing the life ; is the fact brought in to have that 
mstant sway over the conduct, which is reasonable un- 
der the circumstances. 

Our text indicates a principle of God's government ; 
namely : that His bestowment of spiritual blessings upon 
men is proportioned to the amount of the faith ; not 
beliefs but receiving, cooperating faith — with which 
they are prepared to take them from his hand. 

Jesus was going out of Capernaum, after having 
raised the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue from 
the dead, when two blind men followed him, crying and 
saying, ' Thou Son of David, have mercy on us.' Their 
mode of address intimated their assent to the reality of 
the Saviour's claim to be ' Messiah come from God ; ' 
and their persistent, though necessarily difficult, follow- 
ing after him, demonstrated their eager hope that he 
might be prevailed upon to relieve their necessity. He 
passed into a roadside dwelling, and they groped in 
after him, determined not to let him go. Perceiving 
their confident expectation, Jesus asked them: 'Believe 
ye that I am able to do this ? ' They said unto him : 
' yea Lord ! ' Then touched he their eyes, saying : ' ac- 
cording to your faith be it unto you,'' And their eyes 
were opened. The work was done. The blessing was 



i?T 



FATTH THE MEaSUEE OF SUCCESS. 10 

come, in that very instant in which they had faith that 
he conld. and would, and did. heal their malady. Re- 
member that they had not seen him : could not see 
him : had no evidence but hear-say evidence that he 
had healed Jarius* daughter, or had actually done any 
other mighty work, or really was. in any manner, differ- 
ent fi'om ordinary men. But though blind of eye, they 
were brave of heart, and so they reaped beforehand the 
blessing which was afterwards uttered, with gentle re- 
buke, in the ear of doubting Thomas: 'blessed are 
they that have not seen, and yet have believed.' 

This their faith in Christ, and in his love — so strong 
and so affectionate, overleaping all bonds of physical 
infirmity and mental skepticism, and earnestly insisting 
that he could, and that he should, exercise his miracu- 
lous power on their behaK — this gained for them the 
blessing. 

And the fact illustrates, as I said before, a beautiful 
and just principle of the way of God witli men — that 
his giving is always proportioned to our receiving. 

God never wastes any thing. We sometimes are 
tempted to think he does, but it is because we do not 
know the uses to which he puts that which seems, to our 
narrow range of vision, his surplus bounty. He sends 
down the great rain of his strength, and the rills broaden 
over the fields, and the rivers deepen into freshets ; but 
there is not in all that lavish flood, one drop too much : 
the ocean needs it all for the clouds, and the clouds 
need it all for the ocean, and so the circuit goes bounti- 
fully yet exactly on. Were the forests wasted when the 
silence of the green slopes of our continent was as yet 
unawakened, even by the whoop of the red savage V 



168 SERMONS. 

Go ask the coal-mine ; ask the peat-bog ; ask the thick 
black loam which enriches the valleys ; — ask them 
what became of the old forests, and they will tell you 
there was no surplus — no waste ; but just a reservoir 
of bounty until these days when we burn the coal, and 
the peat, and our wheat fields smile with a golden radi- 
ance gathered out of the garnered richness of the past. 

No. God wastes nothing. Least of all, moral bless- 
ings on moral agents. He never transmits a giant joy 
into a pigmy soul ; never sends down his angels with 
great measures of grace into little measures of desire 
and confidence. ' According to your faith be it unto 
you,' — is his rule of bestowment. 

Let us look, first, at the reasonableness of this rule, 
and then examine a little the process of its practical 
working in the experience of men. 

I. Look at the rule itself j and see how reasonable , 
nay^ how necessary it is to man as he is. 

In the first place, all human receiving is always lim- 
ited by the receptive power. That ancient monarch who 
had his table daily spread with food enough for a thou- 
sand men, as an idle boast of regal magnificence, was 
neither able to enjoy, nor digest, any more than if the 
simple ration of one of his own soldiers had been there 
instead. You may lie down upon the brink of the 
Amazon, and touch with your lips its placid waves, but 
though its great breadth removes its opposite bank as 
effectually from vision as if it were the shore of Europe, 
with the Atlantic between, you cannot drink any more 
from it than you can from ' the old oaken bucket that 
hangs in the well.' Girard, Astor, and all such men, 
absorb and assimilate only just so much from their vast 



FAITH THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. llJO 

accumulations as the poor man, Avliose wants are well 
supplied, gets from his daily wages ; all else is surplus 
to be taken care of, a burden to be carried — in it- 
self and its own direct power of bestowing happiness 
scarcely better than if a man who can consume only 
a few ounces of meat in a day, were to try to struggle 
through life under the daily burden of an entire ox 
lashed upon his aching shoulders. 

This law of the body holds with the mind, as well. 
Some who are daily in the company of thousands of vol- 
umes, redolent of all human wisdom, are the most illit- 
erate of men. More than one of the affluent among 
our American citizens has gone down to the grave in 
the fear of the alms-house ; — only really enjoying, and 
using, what he had faith to believe that he had — not 
what he really had. 

By the death of a relative, you come into possession 
of an estate of the value of one hundred thousand dol- 
lars. It is really worth that much to you, and you are 
really worth that much. But we will suppose that you 
do not know it to be worth more than fifty thousand. 
You do not use the income of the unknown fifty. You 
make all your calculations just as if you had it not. 
You go through life thus. Your heirs get the benefit 
of your unconscious savings; but 'according to your 
faith it was to you.' 

With your father, you are a child alone in the world, 
there emerging from the wreck of a family, only just 
you two. Your father's business takes him abroad. 
He leaves you, with all possible precautions for your 
safety and comfort, and his last words are : ' my child, I 
will write to you by every steamer — be sure to follow, 

15 



170 SERMONS. 

to the minutest particular, all the directions I may- 
give.' He goes. The letters come. You obey them. 
Months pass. He does not return. The letters keep 
coming. At last, you get one that — from the hand- 
writing, style, contents — you are in doubt about. It 
does not seem like him ; sound like him ; look like him. 
It is very strange — but you, at last, decide that it is a 
forgery. You do not follow its new directions, but 
keep on, as before. The next steamer brings one that 
you say is his ; the next, one that you reject, and so 
they alternate — you gathering out of the mixed mass 
all that which you have undoubting faith is his, and 
making that the guide of action, and ignoring all the 
rest. By and by he returns, and explains. He really 
wrote them all ; meant for you to obey them all ; meant 
to test your confidence in his judgment, and your fidel- 
ity to him, to see whether you would obey that which 
was not plain. He wrote all. All were for your good. 
But you only took that portion which you believed in. 
' According to your faith it was to you ; ' according 
to your faith the benefit which resulted from such obe- 
dience. 

If we turn, now, to the consideration of the relations 
of faith to the intercourse between God and man, we 
shall find that the same principle enters in, as essential 
to the circumstances of the case. God is unseen. 
Christ is unheard. The Spirit is unfelt. No human 
sense can grasp, or realize either of them. The power 
of belief only gives them — as before our minds — actual 
existence. Hence, since faith brings the consciousness 
of God to us, as our senses brmg the consciousness of 
men and things to us, it follows that faith will first do- 



FAITH THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. 171 

terinine what kind of a God we worship, as our senses 
determine what kind of people are our companions. 
We may make that old mistake which is censured in 
the fiftieth Psalm — " thou thoughtest that I was al- 
together such an one as thyself" We may follow the 
Bible till, in simple trust, we realize the God — holy, 
just, and good — which it reveals, with all his claims 
upon our hearts and lives. But our God will always 
be to us, just what our faith makes him seem to be — 
in like manner as objects of sight are practically always 
to us what they seem, by vision, to be; — though our 
vision and our faith, if imperfect, may both lead us fatal- 
ly astray. Here is the key to all honest error. Those 
who are sincerely deluded, are not false to their idea of 
God, but their idea of God is false to the real God of 
the Bible — who is the God of fact — and so they are 
sincerely wrong. 

But if our faith determines our God, much more it 
determines the extent and quality of our service to him. 
If we sincerely think that all he asks of us is to live 
about as well as other men will average ; we shall be 
content when we reach that standard. But if our faith 
rises to the Scriptural loftiness of requisition, it will 
carry our life — in its aim, if not in its success — up to 
the Scriptural beauty of holiness. 

And so, throughout the whole domain of religious 
thought and duty, our faith becomes the measure of 
our reception ; not always because God would not be 
willing to give us more than we can take (for he is very 
pitiful and of tender mercy), but because we cannot 
take any more than we can carry. Pour the Missouri 
into the goblet which you hold in your hand, and it 



172 SERMONS. 

would all run over except just so much as the glass 
could naturally contam. Make it larger and it will 
contain more ; but still its capacity, whatever it is, fixes 
the inflexible limit of its receiving. And so it is that 
' according to our faith it is to us ; ' — whether we be 
blind of eye in Capernaum before Christ the Jew ; or 
blind of heart here before Christ the king of heaven. 
Turning now to human experience : — 

II. We shall see that this rule holds good in the case 
of the sinner seeking salvation. 

Here is a guilty man. He feels it. He is now 
beginning to make it real to himself. The Holy Spirit 
has just opened his blind eyes to see the immense, 
the fearful distance between God's perpetual, and just 
requisitions, and the response of his life to them. He 
feels that God's Law condemns him fairly. He has 
not one word with which to justify himself, if God were 
to say to him to-day : ' depart into everlasting separation 
from all that is good and blessed.' He would be very 
sad, but he could not plead that such a sentence — even 
to-day — is undeserved by him. He knows that God 
has a controversy with him ; and he feels that in that 
controversy, God is all in the right, and he is all in the 
wrong. But God does not desire his death. He pre- 
fers that he should 'turn and live.' God, therefore, 
says to him, ' I have found a ransom ; repent, believe, 
and you shall be saved.' There are, necessarily, these 
two conditions in all God's offers of salvation to the 
guilty : — the sinner must cease to be a sinner — for 
God does not love sin, and cannot welcome the man 
who practices it to His eternal peace ; and he must 
consent to that merciful arrangement by which the 



■-o 



FAITH THE MEASURE OP SUCCESS. IT-; 

sufferings and death of Christ are substituted, before 
the broken law, for his own, for there is none other 
name given under heaven whereby we can be justified 
from all things from which we could not be justified by 
the law of Moses. Let him do this, and the sinner has 
God's word for it, that he shall live. 

But here are several degrees of truth for faith to re- 
ceive. There is first, the fact of sinfulness. Xext, the fact 
that that sinfulness has issued in danger and condemna- 
tion. Xext, the fact that God will forgive at all. Xext, 
the fact that, to secure that forgiveness, one must believe 
in Christ. Xext, the fact that — all this being true in 
the abstract — God really does make this bona fide offer 
of forgiveness to this individual transgressor to-day, and 
will abide by it to the savmg of his soul, on condition 
of his penitence and faith. 

The condemned man may stop anywhere along this 
path of faith. He may have a little faith — just enough 
to stimulate his disturbed conscience, to keep him 
wretched. He may have a little more — just enough to 
accept the abstract proposition that God is willing to 
save penitent sinners in general ; yet not enough to per- 
suade him that there is nothing but his own criminal 
neglect, at that moment, between him and salvation. 
Or his faith may rise to grasp the blessed whole — he 
may say :' I do, I will believe that God does mean just 
what he says, and that he will now save me for Christ's 
sake. All this I do believe ; Lord, help mine unbeUef.' 

I say he may stop anywhere along this path — ac- 
cording to the amount of faith which he is prej)ared to 
put forth — and ' according to his faith it will be to him/ 
If he believe but a little, he will receive but little — 

15* 



174 SERMONS. 

just enough to keep him miserable. If he beUeve more, 
he will receive more. If he believe the whole, and 
act upon it, he will receive the whole blessing which 
God has promised to them that believe, and will be 
saved ' with an everlasting salvation.' 

It is, then, the sinner's fault — not God's — if he lin- 
gers and is sad ; if he lingers and is lost. What more 
could God have done unto his vineyard, that he has not 
done in it ? Having provided a free and full salvation 
which is accessible to all the world by faith, God has 
done all that he can do, without forcing fre^ moral 
agents — which he never will do — and men themselves 
must do the rest. Their faith must do the rest. If we 
are ever saved, our faith ivill do the rest. We shall 
never get sight ; for only faith can receive the invisible 
things of God. And according to our faith, will our 
condition be. 

III. The rule suggested by our text holds good in the 
growth in grace of the regenerate man. 

His regeneration is a seed time and not a harvest 
time, and he needs to devote himself assiduously to 
nourishing and culturing the good seed of the word 
within him. But all his nourishment must be received 
from God through faith. The Christian does not see 
God, or hear God, any more than he did while unre- 
generate. His enlarged consciousness of the Divine 
presence is not because God walks near him in the 
domain of sense, as he did not before, but because his 
own power of faith is quickened so that the invisible 
things of God are now, in an enlarged measure, visible 
to his soul. And the more this new power of faith is 
quickened and strengthened, so as to bring God practi- 



FAITH THE MEASUREOF SUCCESS. 175 

cally nearer, the dearer He seems, the sweeter his will, 
the more lovely his character, the more admirable his 
government ; — the more the soul is drawn toward him 
in the ineffable tenderness of devotion, and so the more 
weaned from all that is ungodly in the world, and al- 
lured along that path which ' shineth more and more 
unto the i^erfect day.' But let faith grow faint, and its 
gaze fade into indistinctness, and it is as with the 
sailor when the shore line gets dim, and the fog shuts 
down, and the light is gone, and he cannot make out 
his bearings, and is driven to steer by the sound of the 
breakers, when the breakers seem to sound all around 
him, and, perplexed and alarmed, he cannot tell wliere- 
away is his desired haven. 

The child of God who has ' a strong and lasting' faitli, 
and can always see the path of duty, need never be 
thus perplexed. His stalwart faith will give him de- 
cided knowledge of the Divine will, and the magnetic 
needle would as soon be found pointing East, as he 
shaping his life in any other direction than that toward 
which the urgency of his spirit forever drives him, and 
the urgency of God's Spirit forever draws him. Faith 
links his soul to all the motive power of God's word, as 
the iron shackles drag the laden train after its locomo- 
tive ; if it be strong enough to bear every strain, he 
will have no difficulty in following God, and his hfe 
will be a continual response to the prayer: ' draw me, 
and I will run after thee.' But ' according to his faith, 
it will be to him.' And if his faith is weak, he will be 
timorous, and anxious, and uncertain — meanhig well 
but Uving ill — oscillating between that which must be 
wrong and that which may be right ; misleading men, 



176 SERMONS. 

glorifying not God, and being saved at last, ' so as by 
fire.' ^ 

IV. This truth that God's bestowments are propor- 
tioned to our power of reception hy faith ^ applies^ also^ 
to His dealings with His Church, 

There are three things which may be said to be indis- 
pensable preliminaries to the revival of God's work with 
anv Church. The first, is that the members of that 
Church repent of all their backslidings, and return from 
all their inconsistent wanderings, and ' bring all the 
tithes into the storehouse,' to- prove God, if he will not 
pour out a blessing upon them. The second, is that 
they pray for the outpouring of the Spirit — since God 
has said : ' I will be inquired of by my people to do these 
things for them.' The third, is that they make earnest, 
personal effort to bring sinners to the acknowledgment 
of the truth, ' going out into the highways and hedges, 
and compelling them to come in.' 

Now, at a glance, it is obvious that the rule of our 
text must apply to each of these three conditions. Let 
the backslider endeavor to return to God. He must 
have faith : — (1) that he needs to return ; (2) that he 
can return ; (3) that the way of repentance and faith, 
which he trod when he first came to Christ, is the way 
over which he must now travel once more ; (4) that 
God will help and accept him ; (5) that every motive 
combines with every other to invite and reassure him to 
set out at once on his return. And just in accordance 
with the power with which his faith grasps these, and 
stimulates him to the action indicated by them, will be 
the swiftness, and success, and comfort of his return. 
He may linger wretchedly for mournful months around 



FAITH THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. 177 

the vestibule of the palace of the king ; havhig just faith 
enough to feel that he ouglit to repent of his backslid- 
ings, and to realize God's displeasure at his unfaithful- 
ness, but not faith enough to realize that — notwith- 
standing all — his all-merciful Father is still waiting 
with Divine patience, to forgive his prodigal son. 

So the Christian who desires to have God's work re- 
vived in the Church, cannot pray at all without some 
faith, ' for he that cometli to God must believe that He 
is ; ' and the more fervent his faith, the more ' fervent 
and effectual ' will be his prayer ; so that here, too, ' ac- 
cording to the faith ' of its members will it be to the 
Church that needs and seeks the outpouring of the 
Divine Spirit. 

And most of all will it be found clear, that ' according 
to their faith ' will it be with Church members, in their 
success in beseeching the impenitent to be reconciled to 
God. There is so great an incongruity in the pleading 
of a merely nominal Christian — having little faith, or 
none at all — with his neighbor, to ' have faith ; ' that 
it may be set down as sure, that only when faith be- 
comes strong and clear in the minds and hearts of the 
professed followers of God, can they be expected to say 
unto those around them who are in their sins, ' come 
with us and we will do you good, for the Lord hath 
spoken good concerning Israel.' 

Only that Chu.rch, then, which repents, and prays, 
and labors for the descent of the Spirit with a zeal and 
holy earnestness w^hich is founded upon a vivid and 
comprehensive and soul-pervading faith ; has any right 
to expect that God will cause them to be an oasis in the 
moral desolation of the earth, or use them as his instru- 



178 SERMONS. 

ments for the performance of that work — that strange 
work — whereby he is working effectually for the sub- 
version of Satan's kingdom, and the final triumph of 
the Redeemer. 

V. / cannot close without suggesting^ in a word^ how 
the principle of our text aids in the interpretation of 
many of the Providential dealings of God ivith men. 

If we could look down upon ourselves, and the world 
around us, with God's eyes to see all that is involved in 
each event of our life, and God's mind to perceive all 
the relations of that event, running before and after ; 
perhaps we should always be able to feel that things are 
best as He orders them. But, as it is, we are continu- 
ally tempted to misunderstand him, and find fault with 
what is obscure in his dealings, and wish to change 
this, and obviate that, until we are at cross purpost;s 
with him and his government, and make ourselves mis- 
erable and wicked in the most needless and absurd 
manner. Nobody, in sailing down the rapids of the St. 
Lawrence, wants to take the helm out of the pilot's 
hand. Too much is felt to be at stake. His skill 
must be the salvation of all on board. And just so — 
if we only have faith enough to realize the resemblance 
in the situations — we need to have God's hand at the 
helm of our life ; we do not dare even to offer any criti- 
cism, or make any suggestion, but knowing his infinite 
skill and love, we shall receive meekly and gladly, every 
event which he sends, — feeling that even the chastise- 
ments cannot be spared, or he would spare them. 

Xo matter if all above is sometimes very dark, and, 
in the temporary gloom, we can make out nothing — 
cannot understand the meaning of a single sound that 



FAITH THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. 1T9 

falls upon the perplexed ear ; and the very sphere-music 
seems breaking into melancholy jargon. No matter — 
all is right above, notwithstanding all. Have patience, 
and have faith, and the strain will unfold itself to you, 
as even now it does to those that are higher than we. 

" Experience, like a pale musician, holds 
A dulcimer of patience in his hand, 
Whence harmonies we cannot understand. 
Of God's will in his worlds, the strain unfolds 
In sad, perplexed minor. 
We murmur, — ' where is any certain tune 
Or measured music, in such notes as these ? ' 
But angels, leaning from the golden seat, 
Are not so minded ; their fine ear hath won 
The issue of completed cadences. 
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper — ' Sweet.' " 

Believe in God the loving Father, and in Christ the 
atoning Son, and in the comforting Spirit whom they 
send ; and there need never be any sadness in your life, 
for He 'keepeth thee.' But, 'according to your faith' 
will it ever be unto you ! 



XI. 

CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE* 



MARK XII: 37. 
AND THE COMMO:^^ PEOPLE HEARD HIM GLADLY. 

A MERELY literal translator, following the surface- 
sense of the original of this text, would be apt to Eng- 
lish it thus : '' and the great multitude heard him 
gladly." Sawyer's new version, lately published, so 
records it. Wiclif, in 1380, rendered it — " and myche 
puple gladli herde hym." Tyndale, in 1534, Cranmer, 
in 1539, and the Genevan version, in 1557, agreed in 
construing it — '' and moche people hearde him gladly." 
The Rheims version, of 1582, gives it — '^ and a great 
multitude heard him gladly." King James' transla- 
tors first raised the verse from the mere record of a 
numerical fact — giving, as it were, the census of those 
auditors of Jesus, who happened to be pleased with 
what he said on this occasion of his utterance in Jeru- 
salem — to the dignity of the enunciation, or at least 
the suggestion, of a general principle of his preaching 

* Williams Hall, Sept. 30, 1860. 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 181 

as related to the public hearing ; interpreting it, — " and 
the common people heard him gladly." The difference 
between this and the previous translations, it may be 
urged, indeed, cannot be very wide at furthest, because 
every great multitude is presumably composed, in its 
majority, of ' the common people.' But I submit that 
there is a democratic aroma about the verse as we have 
read it from childhood, which we miss from the other 
rendering, and which leads us to dive under the surface 
of the Greek, to see whether we may not find scholarly 
endorsement for continuing to believe that this passage 
was intended to chronicle for us one of the noblest and 
most precious traits of our Redeemer's teaching. 

Looking carefully, then, at the language, we are 
struck, at once, by the fact that the word oilog (ochlos^ 
which Mark selects here as the noun descriptive of the 
company of people gathered together, is a word whicli, 
by usage descending from Pindar, ^schylus, Plato, 
and other of the old Greek writers, was specially used 
to signify the low populace, the turbulent, irregular 
crowd, in distinction from the word dljiw^ (dcmos^^ 
which indicated an orderly, decorous, assembly ; mucli 
as, in Latin, turba signifies a crowd in positive disorder, 
and populus^ a calm and compacted convocation. So 
far as this noun goes to color the meaning of the sen- 
tence, it is clear, then, that it favors the rendering of 
our common version. The article and adjective wliicli 
assist to shape its sense are o nolvg Qio polus^^ words 
which, in their plural form — ol nollo) — (Jioi poiioi) 
every schoolboy knows have been used since the days 
of Aristotle, as a nickname for the vulgar multitude. 
Putting the three w^ords together, I think we arc perfect- 

16 



182 SERMONS. 

ly safe, then, in saying, that, by 6 nulig o^Xog^ (ho polus 
ochlos^, Mark unquestionably meant as nearly what we 
mean by ' the million,' ' the masses,' ' the common peo- 
ple,' as it is possible to express his meaning in our lan- 
guage. He did not intend merely to say that a great 
many people listened with pleasure to Christ on that 
occasion ; but that a great many comparatively unintel- 
ligent and unlikely people — the populace — heard him 
gladly. 

One word on this adverb which informs us how they 
heard — rjdecog^ (hedeos). Homer often uses the adjec- 
tive whose sense it takes, to express the palatable qual- 
ity of wine, and Xenophon applies it to the enjoyment 
of pleasant food ; and Mark transfers it here, almost 
without a figure, to convey the analogous effect of intel- 
lectual and spiritual aliment upon the multifarious 
auditors of Jesus. The words of Christ's preaching 
wore, to the common people of Judah, as David says 
the judgments of the Lord were to him — "sweeter 
than honey and the honey-comb." To borrow the per- 
tinent thought of an old French commentator, Louis 
De Dieu, the sense of the whole is that '' while the 
Pharisees, and the Scribes, and the principal people 
among the Jews held Christ in contempt, the common 
people loved to hear him." 

Our text — thus justified in its familiar sense — sug- 
gests, for our consideration, a principle and an inquiry ; 
the principle — that, humanly speaking, the success of 
the Gospel in this world must mainly depend upon the 
ability of those who preach it to gain the ear and heart 
of the masses of the people ; the inquiry — how may 
the preachers of the Gospel most successfully imitate 



CHRIST AXD THE COMMOX PEOPLE. 183 

tlieir great Master in procuriug the common people to 
hear them giadly ? 

Let us first examine the principle. 

I. Leaving out of the account the agency of the Holy 
Spirit, the success of the Gospel on earth ?nust mainly 
depend, so far as human instrumentality is concerned, 
upon the ability of its preachers to make the common 
people hear them gladly. 

In its very essence it is a Gospel for the common 
people — having special adaptation for them, and a 
special mission to them — so that to fail of reaching 
them would he to fail of success. Preachins; the 
Gospel to the poor, is placed by Matthew on a par 
with miracles, as an evidence of the Messiahship of 
Jesus, and in demonstration that His is the true reli- 
gion. The religion of all previous time had either re- 
jected or neglected them. In all the ancient classics, 
I do not remember one line that pleads for them. Even 
the eleo-ant and tender Horace could sav, •* I hate the 
vulgar crowd, and keep them at a distance.'' And the 
amiable and philosophic Cicero declares it as his opin- 
ion that ''the employments in which men engage for 
hire, especially those requiring mere manual labor, are 
all base. The pay received by such is the pay of the 
slave. ... In short, all workmen ply base callings.'' * 

Says a recent historian.! •• In life and death, the dis- 
tinction [between the rich and the poor] continued. 
The rich man went clad, for instance, in the toga. The 
poor man wore the tuyiic. He sat in lowly places, look- 



* Cic. De Officiis, I. 42. 

t Eliot's Ancient Romans, Vol. II. p. 316. 



184 SERMONS. 

iiig up to the rich alike at the festival and at the tri- 
bvinal. Ill the shade of the latter's palace, the poor had 
the street, or his scarcely more comfortable lodging for 
a home. His struggles over, he was carried forth by 
night, as if his burial were a disgrace to the city." 

The Pharisee called the uneducated multitude " ac- 
cursed." Even the Jewish ritual made a difference — 
not as before God, but as before men — between the 
humble suppliant whose means were exhausted in the 
gift of a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons, and 
the wealthier worshiper who could bring to the altar 
the firstlings of the flock and of the herd. 

Prom Eden to Bethlehem, from Adam to Christ, there 
had not been on earth any Gospel for the poor. But 
Jesus was born into the ranks of poverty. His cradle was 
a manger. His mother's sacrifice, when she presented 
him in the temple, was of the humblest sort. His 
young hands toiled . for bread. He learned, and for 
years lived by, the trade of a house carpenter. And 
when he went about his Pather's business, and taught 
the multitudes among the hills of Judea, and by the 
lake-side of Galilee, he had not where to lay his head, 
and satisfied his hunger from day to day, from the 
labor of his disciples, or the gifts of friends. 

Being such in his humanity, his Gospel naturally 
flowed forth upon that level of life on which he moved. 
Himself a poor man, he preached glad tidings to the 
poor, and they received them as from one congenial to 
them. He did not refuse to teach the rich because 
they were rich, nor did he mitigate the terms of salva- 
tion to the poor, because they were poor ; but ignoring 
social distinctions, he preached to all men, rich and 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 185 

poor, as if they we-re just only men, who, whatever 
their earthly circumstances, must live and die, be saved 
or lost, as men. Yet he had a fellow-feeling with those 
whose great battle of life is for food convenient for 
them, and he specially unfolds the great things of God 
so as to meet their necessities. In their orphanage and 
solitude he teaches them to look up into the prophetic 
sky and confidently plead : '^ Our Father whix^h art in 
heaven." In their sore struggle for sustenance he bids 
them cry : " give us this day our daily bread." And 
when the sharp stones of life's pathway gore their feeble 
feet, and its thorns tear the flesh under their garments, 
and the voice of Satan calls : ' come over among these 
flowers and eat these pleasant fruits,' he assures them 
of kind and swift answer when they pray : '' lead us 
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; " while 
everywhere and always he throws over their rugged lot 
the hopeful sunshine streaming down from that better 
country, that is an heavenly ; where ' the wicked 'cease 
from troubling and the weary be at rest, where the 
prisoners hear no longer the voice of the oppressor, 
where the small are with the great, and the servant is 
free from his master.' Such being the Religion which 
the Saviour — anointed of God ' to preach the Gospel to 
the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the 
blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised,' — 
came to organize and energize for the renovation of the 
earth ; it is clear that from its very essence its success 
must be involved in its ability to reach and raise up the 
masses of the people. Such a Gospel is, in itself, a 
failure if the common people do not hear it gladly. 

16* 



186 SERMONS. 

The same conclusion becomes inevitable when we 
consider that, in the nature of things, the world will 
always be mainly composed of ' common people.' ' The 
poor ye have always with you ; ' they ' shall never cease 
out of the land.' As the face of the earth itself is 
slowly tending toward a general symmetry, the moun- 
tain cliffs disintegrating and tumbling down with win- 
ter's frost, and the hills wearing away under the abra- 
sion of streams and storms, and the ravines rising upon 
the tribute of the hills ; so doubtless the sharper inequal- 
ities of social life are becoming mitigated under the grad- 
ual forces at work upon them. But as we never expect 
the globe to assume perfect roundness, so we have no 
reason to anticipate any such modification of the social 
condition of mankind, as that its incalculable majority 
shall not always be, comparatively, of the ' common 
people.' If the Gospel, then, does not attract them, it 
must have, numerically, moderate success. 

Add to this the obvious fact that the masses are, on 
the one hand, peculiarly exposed to all temptations to 
vice and irreligion and erroneous belief, and, on the 
other, guarded most imperfectly by intelligence and 
culture to resist them, and it becomes yet more clear 
that a system of religious teaching which does not spe- 
cially consider and adapt itself to their prejudices and 
necessities — which is not even better fitted to touch and 
teach and transform them, than other men — must 
necessarily fail, in great part, to do the work which 
humanity is waiting to have done by God's merciful 
interposition here. 

It is however a cheering fact, overbalancing whatever 
is discouraging in this consideration, that the ' common 



' CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 187 

people,' if most exposed to the seductions of the enemies 
of the Gospel, are yet also naturally most open to the 
force of its appeals. Their minds are less preoccupied by 
schemes of ambition, their consciences less benumbed 
with the opiates of worldliness, their moral natures 
less enervated by the seductions of sense. This world 
— with its hard struggle, every day renewed, for the 
means of subsistence — does not seem to them so allur- 
ing as to invite their eternal continuance, and thrust 
itself between their eyes and all pictures of ' the rest 
that remaineth,' prompting them to say — as one of the 
merchant princes of New England is reported to have 
done — '' Beacon Street is heaven enough for me ! " 

To this principle, that the success of the Gospel in 
this world must mainly depend upon its power of con- 
quest over the minds of the ' common people,' expe- 
rience has set its seal. ' Not many wise men after the 
flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, 
but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to 
confound the wise, and the weak things of the world 
to confound the things which are mighty, and base 
things of the world, and things which are despised, hath 
God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to 
naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in 
his presence.' The great majority of every Christian 
Church is usually composed of those who are neither 
wise, nor wealthy, nor mighty, with the wisdom and 
wealth and might of this world. Humble day-laborers, 
faithful servants, lowly and conscientious toilers along 
obscure and narrow paths, poor widows, and lonely 
orphans, these — if we may trust the records tliat lie 
under our eye, to indicate tlie annals of the Church in 



188 SERMONS. 

all its ages — have made up the mcalculable majority 
of those who have believed, and therefore spoken, who 
have been found faithful in that which they promised, and 
have received the crown of glory that fadeth not away in 
heaven. How few, in the bright history of the achieve- 
ments of grace, — how few the names that come down 
to us from the distant centuries, as having belonged 
to men of note in their generations. We admire the 
story of the Christian faithfulness of those who have 
borne the burden and the heat, but we admire those 
who, so far as the annals of wealth and power and 
place are concerned, were always nameless and un- 
known. '' Where are they, the army of martyrs, who 
soaked the sand of the Eoman circus with their blood ? 
Who fed the fires of Smithfield with their life ? Whose 
bones whitened the valleys of Piedmont, the marshes 
of the Low Countries, or the heath-covered hills of 
Scotland ? No pious hand gathered their ashes. No 
monumental marble records their names and their con- 
stancy. The world has forgotten them. It never knew 
them. But were they unknown ? Did they perish ? 
Are they forgotten ? for one moment of that light 
which shone upon the dying Stephen, and we should 
see them close around the throne of the Lamb that was 
slain for them, and for whom they died, radiant with 
the beauty of blessedness incorruptible, the most noble 
host of the sons of God." * 

It is impossible to look over the churches of Christ 
as they now are, or to glance back at their annals as 
they have been from the beginning, without reaching 

=^ Bethune. Sermons, (1846), p. 84. 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 189 

the conclusion that — while the Gospel excludes no 
man, and has nearly always had the willing and worthy 
service of some of high intellectual capacity, and broad 
culture, and extended influence — there must yet be 
some special adaptation of its principles to the condition 
of those who are humble in their earthly circumstances, 
and obscure in their worldly position, or the common 
people would not always have heard it so gladly. And 
it needs no further argument to prove that the preacher 
of the Gospel is bound to seek especially to adapt his 
ministrations to this fact ; and so to labor in things 
spiritual as to gain the ear and win the heart of the 
masses to the truth he brings. 

We advance, then, to the inquiry wliich the text 
suggests : — 

II. Hoio may those who administer the Word pro- 
cure the ' common people ' to ' hear them gladly ? ' 

They must preach as the Saviour preached, and — 
since ' the life is more than meat,' — they must live as 
the Saviour lived. Upon certain more obvious details 
under this general reply, it is hardly needful for me to 
dwell, and I pass at once to name others wliich claim 
some special unfolding. 

1. The preachers of the Gospel ought to mingle 
with the common people as Christ did. Though he 
was high, yet had he respect unto the lowly. '^ Every 
condition of society was open to his choice, and human 
taste would have selected a state of wealth, and rank, 
and worldly influence ; but this would have removed 
him from the society of the pcoi)lc ; whereas his 
object was to make himself one with them. He se- 
lected others to assist him in preaching the kingdom of 



190 SERMONS. 

heaven ; but he asked not philosophy to argue in its 
defence, nor poetry to sing its praise, nor eloquence to 
pour forth its oratory, nor royalty to clothe it with 
state, or arm it with power. The instrumentality he 
employed was of the humblest order ; was, like him- 
self, ' raised up from among the people,' and there- 
fore adapted to gain the attention of the people." * 
Cradled among the beasts — because his mother's pov- 
erty made ' no room for them in the inn ' — trained 
among the young Nazarenes of lowliest life, and grow- 
ing up to manhood surrounded by all the associations 
which cluster around a poor man's dwelling, Christ 
ever made the common people mainly his associates 
and intimates. Thus, when he preached to them, it 
was as brother talking to brother, and friend to friend. 
He knew what was in man, not merely because he 
had a divine insight, but because he mingled with men 
who were not masked by position, or solicited by any 
unnatural stimulus to attempt to be, or seek to seem, 
different from what they were. 

He who desires so to imitate the Great Master that 
he may gain a like glad hearing from the multitude, 
must move among that multitude as an equal, a broth- 
er, and a friend. He must familiarize himself, by act- 
ual contact, with all the peculiar moods of mind, and 
phases of heart, and movements of conscience, of the 
common people. He must plant himself in that plane 
in which they live, and move, and have their being, so 
as to put his soul in their soul's stead — and take cog- 
nizance of the driftings of their prejudices, and the 

^ Hams' " Great Teacher.'' p. 255. 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 191 

gusts of their passions, and the inertia of their unbelief; 
knowing, by acute and flexile sympathy, their dangers 
and difficulties, their hopes and fears, the processes of 
their minds, and the avenues to their hearts, so that 
being ' made all things to all men, he may by all means 
save some.' Something, indeed, may be gained in this 
direction from books, by those who know how to study 
them with discrimination, but those volumes which are 
crowded fullest of that honest human nature which is, 
and which needs the preacher's labor, are the folios of 
streets, and the quartos of markets, and saloons, and 
halls, and warehouses, and the duodecimos of firesides ; 
and that man who can read these with most profit for 
his work, will preach the sermons that the common 
people will most throng to hear. There is a sturdy 
common sense resident in the masses, which eschews all 
shams and make-believes, and which scorns all fine 
things whose fine blossoms never ripen into any fruit ; 
and he who has mingled with the masses enough to 
become saturated with that sense, and who shapes his 
pulpit appeals continually in the thought of it, and by 
the help of it, will be surest to sway the common mind 
by his logic, and to fire the common heart by his ap- 
peals ; while, at the same time — since 

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," — 

more likely than if pursuing an opposite course, to 
move also those of broader culture and higher taste 
who may be among his auditors. It were as absurd for 
the physician to attempt to prescribe for the varying 
maladies of his patients without going to see them, and 
without any effort to find out wliat particular phase oi* 



192 SERMONS. 

disease demands his treatment, as for the preacher to 
think of saving the masses by means of a pulpit that 
has ignored the people, and consequently has no accu- 
rate and experimental knowledge of the work which it 
is called upon to perform. The preacher must ' go out 
into the highways and hedges' where the multitude 
are, if he would ' compel them to come in,' that God's 
house may be full, and Satan be defrauded of those 
who ' are taken captive by him at his will.' " The 
three great books for a minister to study," said one 
of the old Puritans, '' are the Bible, himself, and the 
people." And a modern divine has added : " he who 
studies the people most, will usually preach to them 
best." The truth of this remark has found illustration 
in the history of many of the most eminent preachers in 
the annals of the Church. It is on record of that won- 
derful man who preaches to more people in London 
every Sabbath than twenty other ministers, that during 
the early period of his labors, he was accustomed to 
make his home at the houses of the villagers, until he 
had gone round to nearly every cottage in Waterbeach. 
It is no secret that that pulpit orator in our own coun- 
try who stands preeminent among his brethren as a 
preacher to the masses, gets his best logic and his most 
suasive appeals at the street corners, and out among the 
crowd. And we all remember how that voice * (whose 
echoes have hardly died away from this hall,) which 
proclaims God's Gospel of temperance to the multitude 
with such amazing eloquence and pathos, told us that 
its training had not been from the printed page, but 
from long contact with the people in real life. 

=* John B. Gough. 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 193 

2. But the preacher who would make the common 
people hear him gladly, must not merely mingle with, 
and understand them, he must love them, and have 
faith in them. Christ had such an intense conscious- 
ness of spiritual and eternal realities, that when ho 
gazed upon a man, he looked straight through the body 
to the indwelling spirit, merging this palpable life that 
now is, in that which is to come. Estimating all things 
preeminently by their eternal significance and value, 
a soul with a king's robes adorning its inclosing form 
of flesh was to his eye no different from a soul that was 
finding brief and scanty shelter here in the despised 
and diseased body of some mendicant Lazarus. The 
soul — immortal, with high and holy possibilities, with 
dreadful dangers — drew his love; and wherever he 
saw a soul — without waiting to consider in what 
rank its body moved, or with what earthly splendor, or 
abjectness, that body met the gaze of men — he loved 
it, and pitied it, because it was a soul ; just as the 
dealer in precious stones values his great white dia- 
monds for themselves, without even considering whether 
they are contained, for the time being, in a casket of 
gold, or in the commonest paper box. And it was 
Christ's love for the souls of the mo.sses with whom he 
mingled, and his faith that they would respond to his 
appeals, which gave that tender unction to his tones, 
that sympathizing sense to his logic, and that over- 
whelming power to his entire manner, which made the 
common people hear him gladly. 

They who would imitate him in the result must imi- 
tate him also in the process by which it was readied. It 
is not enough to know, thoroughly, the mental condition 

17 



194 SERMONS. 

of the multitude. One must feel confidence in their 
general fealty to truth ; in the probability of their ' hear- 
ing to reason,' before he can with usefulness reason 
with them ; and he will be sure to fail, if all his argu- 
ments do not glow with unaffected love ; desiring noth- 
ing so much as the salvation of their souls. The tear- 
drop of honest sympathy will steal its way through the 
joints of a coat of mail, which a battle-ax might batter 
in vain. 

3. He who would make the common people hear 
him gladly, must ignore all social distinctions, which 
are founded upon any thing else than intellectual and 
spiritual worth. The Bible is addressed to men as in- 
telligent immortals, and in its sight there is no differ- 
ence in essence between a rich immortal and a poor 
immortal ; an immortal merchant and an immortal 
mechanic ; an immortal prince and an immortal pau- 
per. All alike are warned by it to use aright their 
special powers and privileges, to resist the temptations 
peculiar to their positions, to live above the world while 
they live in it, to remember that ' the first ' here is in 
danger of being ' the last ' in the kingdom, and to with- 
stand the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and 
the pride of life. The only distinction of which it 
makes account is ' between him that serveth God, and 
him that serveth him not.' We have already recalled 
the fact that Christ's love for men was for them as men, 
so that Nicodemus, though he was ' a ruler of the 
Jews,' and Joseph of Arimathea, though he was ' an 
honorable counsellor,' were not welcomed by him to so 
tender a fellowship as he accorded to Peter and John 
the illiterate fishermen of Galilee, and to Matthew the 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 195 

despised publican ; who did not come to him by night, 
and did not wait till he was dead, before they publicly 
honored him. 

Any preaching of the Gospel which seeks to have 
power over the multitude, must accord with this spirit 
of the Bible, and this example of our Lord, in recogniz- 
ing and appealing to the essential elements of humanity, 
and not to its accidents of position, and its incidents 
of culture. He who should look from the sun upon 
this earth-ball, would fail to detect any difference of 
level between Chimborazo and Sahara — from that 
far liight all inequalities being melted into the round- 
ness of a smooth and compact globe ; so the eye that 
Heaven fixes on man discerns no social hight nor 
depth ; and the preacher who comes in the fulness of 
the blessing of the Gospel of Christ, will look on man 
with Heaven's eye. He will speak the things of the 
kingdom to all men alike, convmcing all alike of guilt, 
beseeching all alike to repentance, and pointing all 
alike to the cross that goes before the crown. And just 
so far as the Church of Christ with which he labors, 
seize the genuine spirit of the Gospel, and effectually 
cooperate with him in his work, they will ' know no 
man after the flesh ; ' they will ' have not the faith of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect 
of persons ; ' and if a man ' come into their sanctuary 
having a gold ring and goodly apparel, and there come 
in also a poor man in vile raiment,' they will not say 
to him that weareth the gay clothing : ' sit thou here, 
in a good place,' and say to the poor : ' stand thou 
there, or sit here under the footstool,' because they 
know that poor men coming to the house of the God 



196 . SERMONS. 

of consolation will not be won by being despised ; and 
because they remember that, if God's multiplication of 
promises are any proof of special love, the people whom 
he thinks of most, and loves best, are ' the poor of 
this world, rich in faith,' whom he hath made ' heirs 
of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that 
love him.' 

No preacher can have much success in his labors 
among people who do not thoroughly respect him, and 
the common people have too much sense to respect 
that minister of the everlasting Gospel — assuming 
to be an ambassador of the Prince of Peace — whom 
they see giving three quarters of his thoughts, and 
preaching three quarters of his sermons, and making 
three quarters of his visits, and sacrificing three quar- 
ters of his manhood, to half a dozen men of wealth 
and fashion and political influence, who condescend, 
— during good behavior on his part — to honor his 
meeting-house with their (occasional) presence. 

4. He who desires the common people to hear him 
gladly, must preach in a practical manner. I had it 
in mind to say, rather, that he must preach on practical 
themes ; but I remember that any theme is practical, 
that is treated practically. There is at least some slen- 
der thread of influence that runs straight from every 
possible doctrine to every human life. God's works 
are so wonderfully interwoven, that there is no truth 
which has not some relation to all his creatures ; so 
that any truth may be made practical to any man when 
it is discussed in such a manner that he can understand 
it, and feel the force of it, as a motive or a guide. 
That is a mistaken and harmful notion which distin- 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 197 

guishes preaching into doctrinal and practical, as if the 
discussion of ideas and practices were radically diifer- 
ent ; and as if any merely abstract study of principles 
— having no more visibly direct relation to the every- 
day life of men, than a cord of dry wood has to a 
green and waving forest — can be preaching the Gospel 
at all. Christ never is recorded to have preached any 
such ' doctrinal ' sermons. His appeals were concrete, 
direct, practical. Some of those topics which are held 
by many to be the very vitalest essence of a pure Gos- 
pel, he does not appear ever to have made the subject 
of discourse. He spoke often of God, and of his Father- 
hood, of his love of holiness, and his hatred of sin ; of 
man, his immortality, accountability, and lost condi- 
tion ; of the reconciliation of God with man, through 
penitence and faith ; of Satan's power ; of the resur- 
rection and the final judgment ; but I think no man 
can turn to any report of a sermon from his lips de- 
voted to any scientific discussion of Decrees, or Predes- 
tination, or Perseverance, or find even any hint from 
him of such an anatomical dissection and desiccation 
of divine truth, as fills many a folio that has come 
down in the great libraries, like a withered nut in its 
shell, from the School-men, and many an octavo which 
orthodoxy has voted ' safe,' and the multitude has 
voted 'husks,' that the very swine do not eat, and that 
never, even by contrast, put one prodigal son to think- 
ing of the forsaken food of his father's house. Some 
men indeed have received from the all-wise Creator 
minds that cannot help acting upon truth as some 
fluids do upon some salts — first dissolve, and then 
crystallize them. Let such men rejoice in all manner 

17* 



198 SERMONS. 

of philosophy, let them riot among the dry bones of 
dead systems of the past ; perchance they may extract 
from them a little phosphorus that may feebly shine 
upon the future, or a little phosphate that may fertilize 
its furrows. Let them work, for so long as they are 
faithful to their Creator's design for them, they cannot 
go wrong. But let not the preacher who desires to 
move and save the masses, imagine that it will be done 
by preaching sermons that are great with any such ana- 
tomical greatness as theirs. The multitude will not 
listen long to that which they cannot comprehend, even 
though all the college-taught men in the pews say that 
it is ' profound preaching.' They want to be told some- 
thing which they can make use of; something which 
will guide, cheer, stimulate, strengthen them ; and that 
which their minds cannot understandingiy digest, can- 
not assimilate into their moral and spiritual nutriment. 

Hence the most practical preachers have always been 
the most popular ones. Men turned away, in the old 
time, from the splendors of Westminster Abbey, and the 
pageantry of the first St. Paul's, to crowd a plain con- 
venticle where the unlettered lips of John Bunyan dis- 
pensed a practical Gospel which went straight home to 
their hearts and consciences ; and men now turn away 
from the same Westminster Abbey, and pass by New 
St. Paul's, to throng an unconsecrated hall where a 
modern Baptist — who has drunk deep of the plain old 
Dreamer's spirit — thrusts straight into their hearts 
and consciences the same eternal, practical teachings 
tliat were of old, and will always be, ' the wisdom of 
God, and the power of God, unto salvation.' 

5. He who would gain a glad hearing from the 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 199 

common people must profusely illustrate the doctrine 
which he preaches. An illustration is a truth presented 
in a concrete form ; addressing the reason through the 
senses and the imagination — as when the idea of the 
danger of self-deception is made vivid by the picture of 
the house built on the sand ; or the general Providence 
of God illustrated by the Divine care of the fowls of the 
air, and the Ulies of the field. The dull mind is great- 
ly aided to comprehend principles by this manner of 
presenting them, and any mind is led on insensibly to a 
deeper interest in that which is thus made to appeal to 
the feehngs as well as the understanding. Hence that 
audience which listens dozily to the unfolding of the 
principles of the Gospel in the form of dry abstract 
propositions, supported by equally dry abstract consid- 
erations, will wake up to eager, even tearful attention, 
when the voice that was so frigid with the monotone 
of pure logic, slides into the livelier, warmer region 
of intonations that express something that has actually 
happened — or may happen ; something that has what 
farmers call ' the good earth-smell ' of real life about it ; 
something that stirs the blood, and wakes up the whole 
being to receive the suggestion which it makes as one 
with which the actual life of each auditor has some- 
thing to do. Children love 'stories' because their im- 
mature minds cannot relish — can hardly begin to grasp 
— abstract truth ; and the masses are hkc children in 
this preference for truth illustrated, over truth merely 
stated. 

Our Saviour well understood this, and hence his 
style of preaching was very largely figurative. His 
parables are the most marked feature of his recorded 



200 SERMONS. 

addresses ; more than one half, probably, of all his ut- 
terances which are preserved to us, having been of 
this description. It was precisely because, in this man- 
ner, he made the truth so vivid and impressive, that, as 
Luke tells us, ' all the people were very attentive to 
hear him ' [literally — ' hung upon his hps.'] And the 
preacher who would secure a like eager attention from 
the multitude, must speak to them not merely in a 
practical manner, but, in the constant use of parable 
and metaphor and simile and incident, he must flash 
his meaning upon their minds, so that they cannot 
mistake it when they listen to it, and cannot help list- 
ening to it when within the sound of it. That is a 
most woful folly which has possessed some eminent men 
— alike in the pulpit and the pews, — namely : that a 
highly intellectual style of preaching must abjure this 
concrete and illustrative element, and dwell mainly in 
the region of metaphysical subtleties ; as if preaching, 
like the atmosphere, will grow thin and dry in propor- 
tion as it rises above the average level. Daniel Webster 
is recorded to have said that the most gratifying compli- 
ment which he ever received for his powers of oratory, 
was from the lips of a plain farmer, who grasped his 
hand, on the conclusion of one of his great arguments 
at the bar, saying, with glistening eye : '' I liked you 
very much, Sir, for I understood every word that you 
uttered!''^ I doubt if anything can be better praise 
than this for the preacher, or if he can gain it in any 
better manner than by using freely his power of illus- 
trating the truth which he presents. 

6. That preacher who desires to make the common 
people hear him gladly, must be thoroughly in earnest 



CHRIST AND THE COMMON PEOPLE. 201 

in his work. A ' terrible earnestness ' has often dven 
irresistible power to the orator who has lacked many 
other important qualifications. The masses are too 
shrewd to be moved by the perfunctory performances 
of him who preaches because it is one way of earning 
bread, and he has agreed to do it — so many sermons 
for so many loaves ; or of him who preaches because 
the ministry is a reputable employment for a man who 
must be somebody, and does not wish to be a lawyer, 
and does not care to be a doctor, and so pours upon 
the world through the pulpit the respectability that 
lacks another channel ; or of any man whose heart is 
not in the work, and who is not compelled as the Apos- 
tle was, by the inward agony of a spirit driven by con- 
science, as well as drawn by love to the souls of men 
to say, — '' wo is unto me if I preach not the Gospel." 
A loud cry surcharged with human emotion will make 
any man pause, anywhere. It may be very hard, very 
coarse, verv unwinnino;, but if it have the intonation 
of a soul crying out in its agony for something dear, 
it will arrest the busiest, most careless, multitude. 
And when there is added to this the element of disin- 
terestedness ; when this cry of agonized emotion is 
seen to have its birth in the utterer's benevolent desire 
to save others from something dreadful which he sees 
and they do not see, it becomes sublime in the thrill 
which it sends through the soul. Sucli a thrill has 
often been the secret of the power of the earnest 
preacher over the multitude, and he who is not prepared 
— nay, compelled, to shape unconsciously his e very-day 
appeals into something of this honest earnestness, need 
not expect to gain the common ear and heart. 



202 SERMONS. 

Finally, That ministry which would permanently 
secure a glad hearing from the common people, must 
shape itself to meet their necessities in all its collateral 
arrangements. The task which is set before the preacher 
is the most difficult that falls to the lot of intellectual 
laborers, in that he is compelled to address substan- 
tially the same audience, perpetually, upon substantially 
the same theme. Men would go once to hear a pleas- 
ant and persuasive speaker, if they must needs all stand 
under the vault of heaven while he speaks. They 
might go a few times to hear him in some place where 
hard benches and foul air made listening a physical 
penance, and even danger. They might go a few times 
where luxurious seats, and all manner of comfort was 
offered — at a price wholly out of proportion with their 
pecuniary ability. But the preacher who desires to 
gain a permanent hearing from the masses of the 
people, must invite them to listen where all needful 
accessories of comfort and fitness and even beauty are 
offered, at a cost which will not make Church-going 
their only extravagance. 

Moreover, since spiritual themes are not in them- 
selves winsome to depraved human nature, and since 
the world holds out its gilded baits of sense on every 
corner, it becomes also important that preaching should 
be associated with other labors, and the sanctuary con- 
nected with other means of attraction and influence. 
In such a community as that in which our lot is cast. 
Sabbath Schools for adults and children, social services 
in the week-time of an intellectual as well as spiritual 
cast, frequent special efforts to bind a worshiping as- 
sembly together with the bands of neighborly as w^ell 



CHRIST AND THE C M 31 N PEOPLE. 203 

as Sabbath interest, — all tending to concentrate the 
affection of the multitude, and especially of the young, 
around the Church and the ministry as a center of 
perennial comfort and instruction, become of vast im- 
port. That preacher — otherwise properly endowed — 
who mingles with the multitude,* ignoring factitious 
distinctions, who loves and trusts them, who preaches 
practically to them on whatever theme, who vivifies 
the truth by illustrations manifold, and who speaks to 



^ ]Mr. Spurgeon savs, in a recent letter to the Boston Watchman : — 
" It is mj firm belief that the salvation of London will not come from 
our colleges and seats of learning, but from her dens and haunts of pov- 
erty. I look for an army of converted sinners from St. Giles and AVhite- 
chapel ; men whose fury in sin will be exchanged for energy in righteous- 
ness, whose gratitude for pardon will endow them with hearts of fire, and 
whose acquaintance with the language of the masses will give them 
tongues of fire. Books may educate ministers for the polite ; only expe- 
rience and study of men can prepare a man to touch the heart of the 
masses. We need preachers who will study, not their shelves, but the 
streets and lanes ; not paper and printing alone, but human nature iu all 
its varied developments. The division between the ministry and tlie peo- 
ple is far too wide ; they will never be moved by professional skill ; the 
orator of the mass must be bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh. 
My own success, under God, is due to a sympathy with humanity, and an 
observant eye which delights rather to view man than man's works. This 
is not attainable by any amount of research among our learned tomes. 
We must walk the hospitals, if we would be surgeons, and we must min- 
gle with the people if we would reach their hearts. The language of the 
class-room is not the speech of the people, and if we would be under- 
stood, we must leave our high stilts behind us, and walk on their level, 
thinking and speaking as one of themselves. We need converted prize- 
fighters and regenerated burglars to reach their fellow-criminals ; and 
sweeps, cobblers, street-sweepers, and such like, will be the right mw 
material for mighty preachers of the tnith. Only Thoii, () Lord, put to 
Thine hand ! Do not ima;iine that I depreciate a regular education ; 
on the other hand, I own its utility; but for the vast mass, something 
else is needed, and I have tried to indicate it.'' 



204 SERMONS. 

them as one thoroughly in earnest to save their souls — 
if he have also the great advantage of welcoming them 
to hear him in some pleasant place where all needful 
comforts are offered to them at a cost within their easy 
ability, and if he be surrounded and aided by yoke- 
fellows who are ever on the watch — with smiling 
greetings and the warm right-hand of fellowship — for 
the coming of the poor man and the stranger, and who 
specially seek to concentrate around the place of prayer 
the interest of the young — making it seem to them, 
amid the loneliness of the great city, the nearest to 
that distant home which is the dearest spot in all the 
earth ; so that they can almost say with David's words, 
" blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest 
to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts 
and be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of 
thy holy temple," and so that their soul, through all 
the toil and sweat and dust of the week, ^' longeth, yea, 
even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord;" — such a 
preacher may hope, not in vain, to make the common 
people hear him gladly, and, when he stands to give 
account at last, to be able to spread his hands out 
over a great multitude saved even out of the lowly 
places of earth, and from the haunts of vice and infamy, 
saying, with a humble, yet rejoicing heart, — ' Lord 
here am I, and the children whom thou hast given 
me! ' 



XII. 

THE LORD THE BUILDEE/-^^ 



V SALM CXXTII : 1. 

EXCEPT TELE LOKD BEILD THE HOUSE, THEY LABOR IN YAIN 

THAT BUILD IT. 

What other, what better, could David have said for 
tis ? How meet and right it is, that, standing — after 
our long, long struggle, with all its weariness and pain- 
fulness, with all its mingling hopes and fears, and all 
its multiplied anxieties and corroding cares — at last, 
in the face of overbalancing probabilities against us, on 
the threshold of success in our endeavor to erect a 
temple for God's worship, where the rich and the poor 
may meet together to adore him who is the maker 
of them all ; we should devoutly and most gratefully 
recognize that unseen hand which has led us on, and 
that invisible power which has moved mountains of 
difficulty out of our path, and that bencdictive presence 
which has breathed blessings, — sometimes cheeringly 
recognizable, sometimes in some dark, though brief, 
disguise — upon us all along the way, and by whose 



* Williams Hall, April 15, 1860. 

18 ( ^^^ ) 



206 SERMONS. 

continuous sympathy alone, even now, can the work be 
carried forward, until the topstone shall be lifted into 
its place with shoutings of ' grace unto it ! ' 

Oh ! beloved ! let us deeply feel it ; let us most rev- 
erently, most humbly, most rejoicingly say it : ' not 
unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy great name be the 
praise of this good work which is done for us. If it 
had not been the Lord who was on our side, now may 
Israel say ; if it had not been the Lord who was on our 
side, then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream 
had gone over our soul, then the proud waters had 
gone over our soul. Our help is in the name of the 
Lord, who made heaven and earth. The Lord hath 
done great things for us, whereof we are glad. He 
hath turned again our captivity as the streams in the 
south. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in 
vain that build it ! ' 

The text invites us to a consideration of the methods 
by which God brings about the accomplishment of his 
purposes on earth — a subject general in its character, 
while susceptible, at every point, of directly connecting 
itself with whatever specially interests us in our own 
history. 

The old Latin maxim, ex nihilo nihil fit^ ' from noth- 
ing, nothing comes,' is the starting point in all our 
reasonings concerning God's work on earth. It is obvi- 
ous to the most casual and careless glance, that the 
world is full of something' — full of things, persons, 
events ; full of thinking, feeling, acting ; full of life — 
vegetable, animal, human, corporeal, and spiritual ; all 



THE LORD THE BUILDER. 207 

of which must, m the first place, be accounted for, 
if the world had anv author, and, in the second place, 
must be shaped and controlled, if the world has any 
governor. It cannot have sprung from nothing — for 
' from nothing, nothing comes ' — it must therefore be 
due to some positive force acting first upon, and then 
through it. That force must have intelligence in order 
to impart intelligence to the work of its hand ; and 
all the wise, and curious, and intricate phenomena of 
the universe testify that nothing short of an infinite 
intelligence could have poured such streams of power 
and wisdom along the channels of creation. That in- 
finite intelligence we call God. 

Now if God have ever so much power wisely to cre- 
ate, it is plain that he must, nevertheless, necessarily 
fail to secure any permanent control over his universe, 
unless he have also the power wisely to guide his crea- 
tures after their wise creation ; for the power to create 
anew, would not counterbalance the danger of the mis- 
use and malversation of the old. That general alone has 
power over his army, who can not only bring into it, on 
occasion, new recruits, well equipped and rightly drilled, 
but who can also always and everywhere control every 
movement of the entire force, saying to this one ' go,' 
and to that one ' come,' without so much as a possible 
peradventure to thrust itself between his command and 
their instant and complete obedience. And so it is 
impossible for the human mind to conceive of this 
world as being governed by God — as it most obviously 
is governed by Him ; and of being shaped — as it most 
clearly is shaped by him — continually with the directest 
aim toward far future results, without coming to the 



208 SERMONS. 

conclusion that every creatiire, not merely, but every 
event iii which any creature lias a part, and every 
thing, upon which any creature acting produces, or can 
produce, any modification of that event, is in the power 
of God, and is so controlled by him that the result of all 
these mingling activities, and the blending of all these 
converging forces shall be just what he foresaw and 
forechose. 

Any governing that did not amount to this, would be 
imperfect governing, weak in its processes, and uncer- 
tain in its results : unstable as water, it could not ex- 
cel ; it would not be the Lord's work, neither could it 
be marvellous in our eyes. Any Governor upon the 
throne of the universe who should not always, and 
under all conceivable circumstances, know, not only 
what his will would be, in any given contingency, but 
how to carry out that will to the last iota of accomplish- 
ment — subsidizing thereto (if needful to that end,) 
every thought and every affection and every volition of 
every living creature, with every force in nature, and 
every fibre of the world ; would not be an infinitely 
wise and powerful ruler ; would not be Him in whom 
we live and move and have our being ; would not be 
that God of Providence and Grace who — when his 
own good time is come — shall, ultimately, bruise Satan 
under his feet, and win from the white-robed myriads 
of Heaven the jubilant acclaim — ' Great and marvel- 
lous are thy works. Lord God Almighty, just and true 
are thv wavs, thou kino; of saints ; who shall not fear 
thee, Lord, and glorify thy name — for thy judg- 
ments are made manifest ; and thou hast put it into 
men's hearts to fulfil thy will. Alleluia ! for the Lord 
God omnipotent rcigneth ! ' 



THE LORD THE BUILDER. 209 

All this, now, is very plain so far as inanimate tilings 
are concerned. There is no difficulty in any man's 
conceiving that an omnipotent God can control blind 
and unreasoning matter — turning it whithersoever he 
listeth. That, mere power to move unresisting atoms 
can do. The difficulty is in conceiving how God's 
omnipotence can, as surely, effect its conquest and con- 
trol over reasonable and reasoning creatures — the very 
first and cardinal principle of whose divinely organized 
nature is that they shall be free, under all circum- 
stances, to choose, at their pleasure ; who are consti- 
tuted beings, in fact, and not machines, by their posses- 
sion of this very faculty of choice — which can never 
be coerced or taken away, so long as they remain true 
to God's idea of their proper life. The difficulty is in 
seeing how God can control them without force, and 
how he can force them without destroying that very 
essential principle of their nature which he gave them 
as its crowning glory, and which therefore he never can 
be supposed willingly to take from them. 

The only solution which we can suggest for this mys- 
tery is that which grows out of the consideration that 
the mind of man is always susceptible to the power of 
motive — while God's omniscient omnipotence can both 
discern, in all cases, what motive presented to the mind 
will lead it to choose as He would have it choose, and 
can bring that motive (whatever it may be) to bear 
upon it, so as to produce the choice. Tluis God can as 
infallibly secure those results which he desires from 
his intelligent creation, by arraying before it sucli mo- 
tives as will be sure to make it first wish to do, and 
tlien decide to do, and then do his pleasure, as he can 

18* 



210 SERMONS. 

from his unintelligent creation by the direct and unre- 
sisted pressure of his molding and moving hand. And 
still tlie liberty of man is preserved, because no force 
is applied to his will ; it is not compelled, it is only 
convinced and persuaded freely to choose to do what 
it might decline to do — only that, as it looks at the 
matter, such declining would be against its own best 
interests, and those interests it is not natural for it to 
decide against. 

The methods by which God brings about the accom- 
plishment of his purposes on earth — since those pur- 
poses include and shape matter and mind — are, simply, 
then, the methods by which he shapes matter and mind, 
so as to elaborate from them separately, and from their 
interworking, whatever result it is his pleasure to 
secure. Let us look at these a little in detail. 

1. When God wishes to accomplish any purpose, he 
shapes toward the result which he desires, all those blind 
forces of nature which have in them any cooperation 
with it. When He wishes to give the peace of plenty 
to any land, he sendeth forth his commandment into 
the air, and up to the sun, and forth to the winds, and 
out upon the seas, and along the furrows of the soil ; 
and his word runneth very swiftly to all genial and fer- 
tilizing influences, and they obey his behest with their 
marrow and fatness, and so he fills its borders with the 
finest of the wheat. And when the rigors of winter 
are a needful preliminary to any work of his, he giveth 
snow like wool, and scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes, 
and casteth forth his ice like morsels, until no man can 
stand before his cold. And when that work is done, 
and milder airs are more salubrious for his design, then 



THE LORD THE BUILDER. 211 

he sendeth out his word and melteth them ; he caiiseth 
his wind to blow, and the waters flow. And so fire, 
and hail, and snow, and vapor, and stormy wind fulfil 
his word ; and mountains and all hills, fruitful trees 
and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things 
and flying fowl, praise the Lord by performing his de- 
cree which they cannot pass. 

This mute obedience and subordination of the mate- 
rial forces of the world to the accompHshment of the 
Divine purposes, forms a very striking feature of the 
visible government of God over men — though, from 
the necessity of the case, needing for its secure in- 
terpretation, often, the light of subsequent history. 
The deluge ; the fate of the cities of the plain ; the 
seven years of plenty followed by the seven years of 
famine ; the ten plagues in Egypt ; the parting of the 
tides of the Red Sea, and afterward of the Jordan ; the 
gift of manna ; Balaam and his beast ; the standing 
still of the sun and moon at the command of Joshua ; 
the fleece of Gideon — wringing wet while the earth 
around was dry, and dry while dew was on all the 
ground ; the pestilence which followed David's number- 
ing of the people ; the flame leaping down upon the 
sacrifice of Elijah, and the rain that followed his prayers, 
and the fire tliat consumed the messengers of AhaziaU ; 
the iron that swam at the word of Elisha ; the starlight 
that guided the Magi to the manger where Christ's 
earthly life began, and the gloom that overshadowed 
the earth when that life had reached its agonized end- 
ing ; the fiery vision that blinded the eyes of Saul on 
the Damascus road, and the viper-bite which did not 
harm him when his name was Paul — these all speak. 



212 " SERMONS. 

out of the sacred record, in accumulated testimonies 
that it is the opening of the Lord's hand which satisfieth 
the desire of every living thing, that it is that which 
He gives them which they gather, that in his hand are 
the deep places of the earth, and the strength of the 
hills is His also ; that he turneth all his mute creation 
whithersoever he listeth. 

Take a single passage of familiar history, and note 
how (from this distance of time, with the light which 
the result throws back upon it) the forces of material 
nature seem to have been Divinely swayed to aid in 
producing the result. Take the emigration of our Pil- 
grim Fathers hither. Go no farther back than Holland 
and we can see, in the lean and slender sustenance 
which their most toilsome labors could secure to them 
there, the gradual formation of one motive by which 
God led their minds to cast about for some better land. 
And when they were almost ready for that second 
exodus which was to transmit them hither, see how 
God sweeps the shore of Massachusetts Bay clean of sav- 
ages, by a pestilence, so that there might be foothold for 
them in their first feebleness, without resort to bow or 
sword. And then when they were once embarked, and 
their number was too great, and like Gideon's host need- 
ed pvirging of some who were faint-hearted, and some 
who were foul-hearted, a great storm bursts upon them, 
and they put back, and leave one of their vessels as un- 
seaworthy, and the wheat is all garnered at last in the 
little cabin of the Mayflower. And even then ' stormy 
wind ' had another mission to fulfil His word for them. 
They had sailed for Virginia. But God did not mean 
for them to land at Virginia. He had not prepared 



THE LORD THE BUILDER. 21 



o 



Virginia for their reception. That was not the soil, nor 
climate, nor position where he desired the foundations 
of New England to be laid. So the winds blew again, 
and the waves beat, and the tides pulled the Mayflower 
northward, so that all the land that God would let her 
make, was the low sand-hills of Cape Cod — and so he 
brought them to his, but not to their desired haven. 
And thus the blind forces of nature always perform his 
bidding, and this is one of the methods by which he 
governs the world, 

2. So when God wishes to accomplish any purpose 
on earth, he sways that intelligence which needs to be 
brought into cooperation with his design, by motives. 
This influence is exerted in innumerable forms. Some- 
times it is by direct pressure, and by the presence of 
the immediate and most obvious motive of which the 
subject will admit ; as when he secures the choice, by 
the sinner of ' that good part which cannot be taken 
away,' by urging upon his soul the guilt of disobedi- 
ence, the beauty of holiness, the joy of forgiveness, the 
danger of delay, or the awfulness of death in sin. 

Sometimes it is by a circuitous and indirect approach, 
that the work is accomplished. Some meteor, in the 
eventide, flashes its sudden and vanishing brilliance 
across the arch of heaven ; or some white-winged cloud 
trails its evanescent shade along some sunlit slope, and 
the mind — so often dull to all teachings — is opened 
to snatch the moral of the scene, and goes away, sadly 
reflecting on the dangers that accompany a life that is 
fitly emblemed by the falling star, and the fleeing 
shadow. Or the sight of a coflin, or a hearse, or a 
cemetery — it may be, in some moods, of a church, or 



214 SERMONS. 

even a Bible — Tvill start the mind upon a train of 
meditation wliich the gentle and gracious Spirit may 
cherish into a motive strong enough to overturn and 
overturn within the soul until He is enthroned there 
whose right it is to reign. 

Very often it is God's way to effect his purposes not 
only by processes of motives indirect, but apparently 
hostile to the result desired, and even at first glance, 
incompatible with it. Thus, it was God's purpose to 
consolidate the children of Abraham into a nation that 
should be a ' peculiai^ people,' and to ingrain in their 
minds so deeply a practical faith in himself as the true 
God and their God, that all the idolatries and tempta- 
tions of surrounding nations should not be able to 
shake that faith. So he gave them the bitter nurture 
of affliction. He turned them over to the abominable 
cruelties of the taskmasters of Egypt. For scores and 
scores and scores of years, he left them groaning under 
acute distress, and sending up their loud and bitter cry. 
A superficial observation would have inferred his inten- 
tion miserably to destroy them. But, when his prepa- 
rations were ready, the reaction came, and the event 
proved that they had been cemented, by the blood and 
tears of those bitter years, into a compact and eternal 
unity, and a substantial nationality, such as no other 
nation on the earth has ever approximated — such as, 
in these distant days, and on these remote shores, still 
draws distinct and clear that ancient line between the 
Jew and the Gentile ; between the Synagogue and the 
Church. 

Very often, too, God's method includes not only pro- 
cesses seemingly at variance with the end sought, but it 



THE LORD THE BUILDER. 215 

uses and overrules motives which are conceived with no 
reference to the result which, in the end, they secure. 
Pharaoh had no conception that he was not a free moral 
agent, in all his deaUngs with Israel, when he would 
not let the people go. He was, and he knew he was, a 
free moral agent. He could, and he knew he could, 
have decided differently from his actual decision at 
every step. And it was the very last thing that he 
would have admitted as being possibly true of himself, 
that he was freely cooperating with God in accumulat- 
ing axound the children of Israel the needful motive- 
power to make it safe to launch them upon their desert- 
wanderings, and their temptations from the wild pagans 
of Arabia Petraea, and the licentious rovers of the slopes 
of Canaan. And yet, though he did not once think it 
in his heart, we can see that He who ruleth all things, 
and turneth the mind of man as the rivers of water are 
turned, did use Pharaoh as an unconscious instrument 
in his hand, and made the wrath of Egypt to praise his 
great and terrible name. The South Sea islanders 
are said to have an instrument of death, whose fatal 
power lies in its recoil ; so, many an arrow of motive 
sent forth from the quiver of God, has done its work only 
when it has glanced from its apparent mark back to its 
real, though unsuspected goal. And so the wrath and 
hostility of man have been made to praise and help 
Him — who is supreme over all, and who knows how 
freely to govern the free, making certain that which he 
desires to do in the world ; by making it certain that 
even his enemies will, of themselves, decide to do all 
his pleasure. 

This being so — the empire of matter and the empire 



216 SERMONS. 

of mind, being alike in subjection to His pleasure — it 
follows, since He who can absolutely and entirely con- 
trol all matter and all mind must be invincible — that 
God can do any thing which he pleases to do, whatever 
it may be. He can make a world, or make an unwil- 
ling man willing, just as easily as a carpenter can drive 
a nail — because he knows how to do it, and has the 
means with which to do it, and the power by which to 
do it. 

So it follows, also — since God's control covers all 
things, and his volitions are the cause of all things — 
that nothing can be done in this world which God is 
not pleased to aid, or, at least, to permit. As well might 
we look to have green fields here, without the rounded 
earth to hold them up. 

' Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain 
that build it.' If there is to be a house of worship 
now erected by this people for the future use of our- 
selves and our children, and the community around 
us ; it is because God has intended to have it built 
from the very beginning of all his intentions concern- 
ing this city which it is to bless, and this Church which 
it is to shelter. He saw it, with prophetic eye, when 
the waves were rolling deep over the spot where it shall 
stand. He saw it when the forest primeval waved over 
the red man's head upon the three hills that beautified 
this peninsula in the olden time. He saw it when 
Wilson and Cotton and the Mathers led our fathers 
here, in the way of righteousness. He saw it when, a 
generation ago, that little band — tremulous with just 
anxieties, yet joyful with a less reasonable hope — laid 



THE LORD THE BUILDER. 217 

the foundation of that house which no longer covers us, 
and on that altar kindled their vestal fire. He saw it 
when Skinner came and went ; and Brown toiled — 
sowing with tears what he was never permitted to reap 
with smiles ; and when their amiable and gifted succes- 
sors, one by one, entered into their labors, and their 
anxieties, and knew not what should be upon the mor- 
row, or whether should prosper this or that. He saw it 
when — in three days it will be eleven years ago — the 
union between us was ratified ; and, not knowing for 
what purpose I was sent, I stood trembling before you. 
He saw it during all those years — and, when the set 
time was come, he began to move upon the minds of 
the people — yours and mine — drawing us hitherward. 
He put it into our hearts to agree together upon that 
course of procedure along which, step by step, he has 
since steadily — though less rapidly than our original 
hope and expectation had suggested — led us. Let us 
not, for one moment, doubt that in every one of these 
delays, he has had a design, as distinct to his own mind 
as the great central purpose itself, and as salutary for 
us — in sifting us of all over-hasty suggestions, and all 
ill-considered methods, and uncongenial helpers, and in 
fitting us — as he fitted Israel by their Egyptian disci- 
pline — by our training here, for a compacter and 
firmer union and communion, and a more unselfisli 
and heroic fellowship, and a broader and more mis- 
sionary activity, when rooted in our now field. 

' Except the Lord build the liouse, they labor in vain 
that build it.' Have I not said this to my own heart, 
time after time, time after time, during tliese toilsome 
months since we have been moving toward this hour, 

19 



218 SERMONS. 

these weary weeks in which, at your direction, I have 
sought silver in the places of silver, and gold of those 
who had fine gold, neither have despised any baser 
metal, out of which we miglit build a tabernacle for 
the God of our fathers to dwell in. And have I not 
said, as dollar after dollar slowly dropped upon the 
little heap, and it grew day by day — not as the sum- 
mer flood swells to a torrent when the tempests beat 
upon the hills, but rather as the round drops slowly 
trickle from the pendant icicles that the winter sun 
briefly touches, when it is high noon — have I not 
said : — ' the Lord is building the house, therefore we 
labor not in vain that build it.' 

Yes ! yes ! It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvel- 
lous in our eyes. 

To HIM now, and henceforth, be praise ! 

May His hand — which has been so long shaping the 
thought of it, and preparing the way before it, and 
waking up an interest even far away among the distant 
hills, and along our remoter New England shores, in 
what it means to be, and to do, in God's service — may 
that same gracious hand be still outstretched in bless- 
ing over us, until, from its deepest foundation to its 
loftiest hight, our temple shall be a thing accomplished 
before the eyes of men, as fully as, for these ages past, 
it has been a thing accomplished in the Divine Plan 
whose outgrowth it is. 

May the blessing of God rest upon every arm tliat 
shall be lifted in toil upon it, and on every beam that 
shall be builded into it, and on every particle of matter 
tliat shall go to help make it a lioly and beautiful house 
where we may worship — with something less of care 



THE LORD THEBUILDER. 219 

and cost, and something more of peace and hope — 
that good and glorious Being whose building of our 
house has gone before, and will now accompany and 
include our own. 

And unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto 
the Holy Ghost, be praise ; as it was in the beginning, is 
now, and ever shall be, world without end. 

Amen ! 



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